Dear Noël(ia),

I’m big on gender stereotypes. They’re egregious, they limit opportunities, they limit the collective imagination. Women get the worst deal by a long way, victims as they are of millennia of male hegemony, caricatured as sex objects, simpletons, chattels and clothes-hangers by artists, admen, fashion designers and pornographers.

I don’t open doors like a “gent”. I don’t buy roses. I disapprove of tennis skirts, Top Gear, Hollywood, Madonna, separate floors in John Lewis, any novels written pre-1980.

But if I’m going to be so openly gender-neutral in my attitudes, then it’s time you got rid of your ruddy, chubby, lairy maleness. I need you to be Santa Claudia.