IT WAS Halloween this week, which meant every parent in the land was forced to dress their children up in idiotic costumes and stand around in the cold while they ran about annoying the neighbours.

And with that out of the way, it is now time to start thinking about what stupidly expensive presents the little mites will be given on Christmas morning.

7 Halloween done ... now it's time to spend the remainder of your cash on Christmas presents no one will remember Credit: Getty Images

A new carbon-fibre bicycle, perhaps. Or a three-quarter sized working model of a MiG-29 fighter jet.

Before then of course, there will be the school nativity play, which you will be expected to attend even if you are in charge of the peace process in Syria and have late-stage diphtheria.

I spoke to one woman this week who said she’d had a letter from her kids’ school, saying: “We note from our records that you haven’t taken your children skiing for FIVE years.”

7 Child cruelty ... allowing five years to lapse since you last took your children skiing Credit: Getty Images

And it made her so guilty, she’s actually booked a holiday to the Alps with them next half-term

These days, we have got it into our heads that children are incapable of actually staying alive unless we keep them occupied literally every second of the day.

We imagine that if we leave children for a second while we have a cup of coffee, they will grow up to be glue-sniffers and murderers.

So when we are on holiday, it’s like a military campaign.

We imagine that if we leave children for a second while we have a cup of coffee, they will grow up to be glue-sniffers and murderers. Jeremy Clarkson

“Right, we will go to the water park from nine till ten and then we will play Frisbee on the beach until lunch and then in the afternoon we will swim with the dolphins, have a water-ski lesson, build a sandcastle bigger than the Pyramids, learn how to speak Greek, play four sets of tennis, get a Padi licence and buy some toys.”

And why? Because think about it, how much of your childhood can you actually remember?

Me, I remember peeling a hard-boiled egg when I was two and then it’s a blank until I was ten and I went for a walk with my neighbours, Lynn and Jane, and we sang In The Summertime, by Mungo Jerry.

7 Even a deadly infectious disease is unlikely to excuse you from the school nativity play Credit: Getty Images

Holidays? I know from family photographs that we always went to Cornwall and I have a dim memory of a waitress falling off a motorbike in a pub car park. And er . . . that’s it.

It breaks my heart to think how much effort my mum and dad must have put into my Christmas presents every year and I can’t remember what any of them were.

Nor can I recall any family trips, birthday parties or much of anything at all.

It’ll be the same thing with your kids. You’ll have worn yourselves out and emptied the bank account to keep them busy and happy, and 30 years from now, when they have kids of their own, it’ll all just be a big grey fog in their heads.

That’s why I’ve filled an album with Photoshopped pictures of my kids in all sorts of exotic locations around the world.

When I’m dead, they’ll find it and imagine that I gave them the best childhood imaginable.

Clever, eh?

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Fifa ban is poppycock

7 England and Scotland players should wear pics of Poppy Delevingne ... Fifa just wouldn't get it Credit: Getty Images - FilmMagic

IT beggars belief that Fifa has banned English and Scottish footballers from wearing poppies when they take to the pitch for their World Cup qualifying match on Armistice Day.

The bungling halfwits who run the completely discredited organisation say the symbol is “political”.

SIGN OUR PETITION at Change.org/FootballPoppies

Well as I see it, the players should simply ignore that ban, wear the poppies anyway and say they’ll see the halfwits in court.

Or if they don’t fancy that, go on to the pitch with a photo of Poppy Delevingne, pictured, wearing an imaginary poppy, stitched to their shirts.

We’ll get the message. The halfwits won’t.

Speak up Trump chumps

7 Watching Channel 4 new has left Jezza slightly left of reality when it comes to Hilary and The Donald Credit: AP:Associated Press

I HAVE been following the American election by watching Channel 4 News, so I’m fully up to speed on what’s what.

The FBI, which is a corrupt organisation run by a madman, has discovered that Hillary Clinton, who is kind and gentle, once sent a completely harmless email that they haven’t even read.

Meanwhile, everyone who supports Donald Trump, above, is a bible-bashing, racist lunatic.

So what we are being told, then, is that half of America’s voting public are dangerous God-bothering, gun-toting idiots.

And that simply isn’t so.

Trump must have some intelligent backers.

And once in a while it would be nice if Channel 4 News would let us hear what they see in the nylon-haired moron.

TIME TO WEATHER IT NOW the nights have suddenly drawn in, it can’t be long before the nation’s motoring organisations start to issue their annual advice about driving in the winter. Usually, we are told to stay at home unless our journey is absolutely necessary and that if we have to go out, we should take a Hazmat suit, a tent, some rope, a shovel, a homing

beacon, 400 pairs of socks, 6,000 jumpers and Bear Grylls. Well I’m sorry, but I’m writing this in the Arctic Circle in Finland, and from here it seems a much simpler message would do. We don’t have bad weather in Britain, ever. So you’re fine.

Dog tale takes the Michael

7 Would you trust this man with your puppy ? Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd

WE learned this week that Michael Heseltine once shot and killed 400 squirrels.

On the face of it, that’s fair enough. Mr Heseltine, above, is a tree enthusiast.

He has created a huge wood near his house and he didn’t want 40 years of hard work being destroyed by an army of irritating little rats.

However, we then discovered that he once strangled a dog because, as they say up North, it “looked at him funny”.

That’s a bit more of a worry.

When the story broke, he was at pains to point out that, after the strangling, the dog stopped looking at him funny. But he went on to say he had it put down the next day anyway.

Hmmm.

HEY, DOLL I HAD to buy a sex doll recently – it’s for a television thing, in case you were wondering – and I must confess that it looked nothing like it did on the packaging. On the box there was a picture of a lovely girl pouting at the camera while wearing not much of anything at all. And inside there was what amounted to a bright pink bin liner with a face that looked like it had been drawn by a four-year-old. Frankly, I’d rather slam my old chap in the fridge door. Now though, an American company called Abyss Creations has introduced a new type of sex doll, which is so realistic it boggles the mind. It is available with a choice of nine different skin tones, 18 different types of nipple and five different types of pubic hair. When these things hit the market they will put Tinder out of business in about five minutes flat.

7 Our new tanks ... but Jezza's isn't convinced they're fit for purpose Credit: MOD

SO the new Ajax mini-tanks that are to be supplied to the British Army have armour that wouldn’t stop a well-aimed rock and a gun that doesn’t really work.

The only good news is that in modern warfare, they’ll never actually be used.