You can't make your children happy - particularly at Christmas

This is the only thing I learned from my experience of bringing up our kids, all of whom are adults now.

You can't make your children happy.

You can't force it upon them.

And Christmas is the time of year when you try hardest to do just that.

It's at its worst when they're little. That's when you want them to be excited but not too excited. This is an emotional state they're not equipped for. All that pent-up anticipation all too easily spills over into tantrums, even tears, which then upsets the adults.

This didn't happen all the time but I well remember the times that it did. It was always when we were trying to make it perfect.

So, have yourself the kind of Christmas you want.

All famous people think they know each other

Vanity Fair have tried to find out the truth about Donald Trump's claim that he and Kanye West are "old friends". 

One of the first things that fame teaches the newly famous is to treat everybody as though they've already met. This always works because once they're famous everybody they do meet will mention the time they met before. The famous person won't remember this because the famous person meets hundreds of new people every day and if it makes these people happy to have them believe that you remember meeting them before then why mess up something that makes them happy? The famous person will have forgotten all about the civilian within minutes of meeting them so it's no skin off their famous nose.

If you're major league famous, like, say, Madonna or David Beckham, all social interactions will be instigated by somebody else. You never have to go "hello, I'm Madonna". It's a given that you're Madonna and therefore everybody is naturally drawn to you and will defer to you. You never have to explain your presence.

The best bit in the first series of "Episodes" is when Matt Le Blanc has lunch with writers Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan. His opening line is "I'm here....why?" He simply can't be caught admitting he's there because he wanted to be. Somebody else must have made this happen.

I'm told the Queen never says hello or goodbye. This makes perfect sense to me. For everybody she deals with life begins when she arrives and ceases when she departs. The only scene that matters is the one featuring the Queen and by definition this is over when she leaves.

And here we have Kanye West and Donald Trump. At the time they met they were the two most famous and controversial figures in the New York area. Therefore it stood to reason that they should meet and have their picture taken.

Do they know each other? They're famous. That's all they need to know about each other.