Somebody from the office came off his bike today and lost half the skin off his face. Makes him look a bit like Hellboy. Reminded me of a similar thing happening to me when I was 12 and how I wished it would scrape off all my freckles. For a bright kid, I was clueless about science.

I guess I was a bit insecure and thought the girls in my class might fancy me without freckles. And stop asking me if I sunbathed under a sieve or had just been sprayed with shit. I kid you not, but the drunk headteacher of a school I was playing sport against once told me that I had freckles because I was half black. As a bright kid, I knew he was a pillock.

I’m not sure I’m insecure today, if that isn’t a paradox. Everything’s great and everything, but I do have dreams in which I find myself naked at the supermarket. Apparently this can mean I’m permanently hiding something, the real ‘me’, or that I’m so confident I just let it all hang out. While I was a nice (and bright) kid, as an adult I’ve got serious issues.

Not like the cast of The Full Monty, whose intentions for baring all are entirely honourable. Although, it has to be said that their press photos are a huge, sorry major, disappointment. This is, after all, Denmark! Couldn’t they have gone a little bit further?

Like the International Performance Art Festival, whose photos of Mad Kate left little to the imagination. In the end we went for the one of her box − cricket box, I hasten to add. Hats off (and pretty much everything else) to the organisers – they must realise that for every ten blasé arty mags, there’s going to be an uncultured one like ours making childish remarks.

Elsewhere, this issue is in danger of becoming our most sexual ever. In Going Underground, we focus on prostitution, at the Roller Derby the men can fantasise about having a rough and tumble with the teams from Copenhagen and Liverpool (netball is mixed in Scandinavia – so why not this?), while their women dream about them visiting the arty Christmas markets to buy their best Christmas present ever.

Choose carefully. With the right gift, Christmas needn’t be such an anti-climax this year.