Good day, dearest Times reader — and welcome to the week where we learnt of yet another area of life that has been struck by inflation: the Christmas stocking. A recent survey found that the average cost of filling a Christmas stocking has risen to £60 — £60’s worth of thoughtful love and affection. Blimey, how big is this sock? Are they filling an XL pair of stretchy tights?

This news has, of course, allowed those from Gen X and above to indulge in an enjoyable nostalgiamoan, which is a word, about how skimpy and cheap their stockings were by comparison. “You’d get a satsuma, a sugar mouse, a copy of The Beano and some soil if you were lucky,” will sigh those of us now needing both glasses and a teenager to explain the more recent references when reading Christmas cracker jokes.

However, I think I know at least part of the reason why Christmas stockings are now proving so costly: delayed ejection from magic. As in, these days we still give our children stockings all through their teenage years and often well into their twenties. Where once you got booted off Santa’s roster as soon as you got your first bra, we now like to “keep the magic alive” even when our children are fully grown lumberjacks and/or working in accounts.

• The best Christmas gifts for under £20

And so, taken as a national average, of course the cost of filling a stocking has escalated. Have you tried filling a stocking with things for a fully grown adult? They take no delight in satsumas or sugar mice — if they wanted them they would have had them delivered to their flatshare in Leytonstone by Getir, along with a couple of bottles of merlot and some Toilet Duck.Into the accountant’s stocking go fags, vapes, CBD gummies, moisturising serums, miniature bottles of whisky, Argos vouchers, a full set of Allen keys, 20 first-class stamps and so on, to a minimum £60 bill. I know one fiftysomething parent who gave their thirtysomething child a year’s worth of Haringey parking vouchers in their stocking — the true gift of love, above even diamonds, as that stuff doesn’t come cheap.So if we balk at the notion of a £60 stocking, the solution is obvious. We need to stop bumping up the national average by giving stockings to people with national insurance numbers and cars, and go back to making the Christmas stocking the sole preserve of those young enough to be genuinely thrilled by an orange, a pencil and a sugar mouse. Although, as the accountant would know, the sugar tax on that mouse is going to be huge.

Apple

Technology news, and the iEverything behemoths Apple have just registered a patent for a smart ring that can be worn on a user’s “wrist, arm, leg, ankle, neck, head and/or other body parts”. And so the miniaturisation of communication technology continues apace, for this is, surely, some manner of forthcoming minuscule iPhone — the tinyPhone — which can be worn as a bracelet or ring.Of course, human nature being what it is, it’s the “and/or other body parts” clause that draws my attention. For there will undoubtedly be people who will wonder: “Is this item something that could, possibly, interact with my genitals in some way?”Maybe not even in a sexual way — after all, depending on your outfit and/or other accessories, it might be that your wrist, arm, leg, ankle, neck and head are already taken up with the real estate of watch, bracelet, trousers, socks, jabot or jaunty beret. In which case the only place you’d be able to put your new iRing would be . . . you know. Satan’s third arm. The lesser leg. Nature’s spare finger.

In which case I look forward to a future where men on public transport murmur, “Siri, who won the match today?” and a robot voice from deep within their trousers replies, “It was the Gunners.” That’s the future! Good luck, everyone!

New Scientist

Long one of my favourite publications — it has stuff about inventions that could save the world and updates on rare hominid skulls found in Malaysia! — New Scientist published a story this week that rocked social media. “A sausage shape is the most efficient way to arrange a small number of balls — but if you attempt to squeeze too many into a bag they will experience something known as the ‘sausage catastrophe’,” the deeply intriguing headline ran.Researching this further, I discovered that a “sausage catastrophe” isn’t something just invented by a New Scientist stringer who has either overordered Christmas lunch trimmings or has a very lively sexual history. The sausage catastrophe actually exists — Wikipedia notes that “The Sausage Catastrophe of J Wills (1983) is the observation that in d=3 and d=4, the densest packing of n spheres in mathbb{R}^{d} is a sausage for small values of n, and jumps to a full-dimensional packing for large n without passing through any intermediate dimensions”.Obviously I’m not really sure what any of that means, but from now on I’d like to refer to the sausage catastrophe as “the big banger theory”.Thank you. Thank you for listening to my joke.

Heather Mills

More sausage news — and there were ill tidings from the world of “people Sir Paul McCartney has been married to who then started their own vegetarian food range”. For while the late Linda McCartney’s sausages go from strength to strength, the non-hog bangers of Heather Mills have not fared so well.“Heather Mills’ meat-free food firm goes into administration with 112 jobs at risk,” MailOnline’s headline explained. It went on to note that Mills had paid tribute to her team for their “blood, sweat and tears”.Well, I don’t want to be overly pedantic here — to learn of any business hitting hard times is always sobering — but I think I might have worked out what the problem was with this company. For if you’re making meat-free foodstuffs, the last thing you want is the staff’s “blood, sweat and tears”. That’s three animal-based ingredients that are going to put off even the most open-minded vegetarian customer.

Dakota Johnson

Christmas is, let’s face it, one of the most stressful times of the year, so it was intriguing to read of the relaxation techniques practised by Dakota Johnson, star of the Fifty Shades film series and partner of Coldplay’s frontman, Chris Martin.“Dakota Johnson insists on 14 HOURS of sleep a night . . . and drops everything to take a bath if she’s stressed — no matter what time of day it is!” the Mail Online headline read.

Talking to The Wall Street Journal, Johnson explained that sleep is her “number one priority”. “I don’t have a regular [wake-up] time,” she said cheerfully. And should things get difficult, then yes — off she goes to the bath. “If in the middle of the day, I’m like, ‘Oh God, what is this world?’ I’ll get into the bathtub. I find water really grounding.”Putting aside the pedantic note that the last thing a bath is is “grounding” — there’s no ground! A bath is the opposite of the ground! What you mean to say is, “I find water really watering” — I found it intriguing that Johnson has talked about how she likes 14 hours of sleep, getting up when she wants and getting her bath cap out at 2.30pm as a solution to her problems. Because liking these things isn’t the real thing being discussed here.Being able to do these things is the key point. Most people have alarm clocks and jobs and kids, or a boiler that can only be switched on between 5pm and 5.27pm. The actual news in this story is that The Wall Street Journal has found one of the mere four women in the world who can zzz whenever they want and spend half the day chilling with their rubber duckie in a hot tub. Indeed, I would say they have a borderline exclusive here — on a par with having solid photos of the Loch Ness monster. Who also probably sleeps 14 hours a day and finds water really grounding. So hurrah! for this deft piece of investigative work. Next week: The New York Times finds one of only three women in the world who has already booked an affordable holiday at Center Parcs for Easter — and is “looking forward” to it.

The mystery of Nigel Farage’s arse

Christmas is swiftly approaching, and with it the tradition of creepy, ghostly Christmas stories. As Andy Williams sings on It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, alongside “kids jingle belling” and “marshmallows for toasting “scary ghost stories” are a key part of our yulery. Jacob Marley rising from the dead; The Festival by HP Lovecraft; a full half of MR James’s oeuvre filling the late-night BBC schedules — dark mysteries are the pickles that cut through Christmas’s jolly, unctuous goose fat.So it’s only fitting that a ghostly mystery haunts our Christmas 2023 — and that mystery is The Mystery of Nigel Farage’s Arse.You scarcely need reminding, but Nigel Farage has been the big, controversial talking point of this year’s I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! As an experiment, ITV paid £1.5 million for a man accused of, during his teenage years, walking through a village singing Hitler Youth songs — just to see what happened. Call it “a broadcaster’s natural curiosity to see what Britain’s political temperature is in 2023”.In the event, it turned out that Britain’s political temperature is “pretty feverish” — for last weekend Farage made it to the final four contestants, unexpectedly favoured by the British public over This Morning national treasure Josie Gibson, the sexy dude from JLS and the tiny racing legend Frankie Dettori. Plenty to talk about at the ITV Christmas party!

• Can I’m a Celebrity down a pint of purest Nigel Farage without gagging?

But the conversation doesn’t end there. For, as one might expect from one of the most recognisable political figures in Britain — despite his having lost every one of the seven seats in parliament he has stood for — Nigel Farage is making cunning use of his spell in the jungle. And his primary weapon has been his arse.In the first two weeks of I’m a Celebrity Farage simply didn’t get much airtime. Why this is we don’t know. Judging by the airtime he did get, it might simply be down to him being a quite socially awkward middle-aged man who walks like a character from Trumpton and has no cultural, social or conversational hinterland. Farage is seemingly unable to talk about anything apart from “snakes in the European parliament” and how when it comes to his reputation you “shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet!”However, Farage got his first piece of big coverage when he showered, naked, under a waterfall.“I’ve just seen Nigel Farage’s arse!” Josie Gibson reported, shocked. In the next episode we got lingering close-ups of Farage — naked again — in the jungle bathtub.Why is this cunning? Well, because one of the show’s rules is that contestants should not get naked — “show bosses [tell] the stars to keep their underwear on”, as Mail Online, very much our go-to “naked celebrities news source”, reported. At the time a “furious” Team Farage “slammed ITV with a legal letter” accusing the channel of breaking an “indecency” clause by broadcasting Farage’s rule-breaking bare bum. But I wonder: how furious were they really? As Farage’s arse became a breakaway news story in its own right, his team’s shock and fury seemed slightly disingenuous. Especially when his official Instagram account mocked up a sexy “Jungle Boys” calendar with Farage’s face photoshopped on to a topless hunk. “A must-have this Christmas,” it suggested, very non-furiously.

• What does Nigel Farage actually bring to I’m a Celebrity?

On top of this we must consider one of the most well-known facts about I’m a Celebrity: the knowledge that the right waterfall moment can offer a career breakthrough. In a memorable moment from the 2006 show, Hear’Say’s Myleene Klass showered in the waterfall in a white bikini she had hastily bought in a shop en route to the jungle. As she recalled later, her profile subsequently sky-rocketed. “So many offers . . . came through as a result of that . . . Best $40 I ever spent.” Klass is now said to be worth an estimated £13 million. Whoever it is on Team Farage that can knock up a fake sexy calendar for Instagram will surely have known this.And so, readers, as we stare into the fire — winter raging outside — we must consider The Mystery of Nigel Farage’s Arse. Did a man who said he isn’t ruling out making a run for prime minister harness the mythic powers of the I’m a Celebrity waterfall and deliberately reveal his arse for the clicks? Like Kim Kardashian before him, is Farage calculatedly building a future on his own bum? And what does it say about British politics that it seems to be working? This week Farage (now on a 46 per cent approval rating among Conservatives supporters) was revealed to be more popular than Rishi Sunak (35 per cent), who has notably not exposed his bum. Not physically anyway.Ultimately The Mystery of Nigel Farage’s Arse has only two possible conclusions. One: Nigel Farage sexually objectified himself in order to further his political career. Or two: ITV sexually objectified Nigel Farage in order to further the jolly, light-entertainment show I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!Like I said, it’s a dark and spooky story that sends shivers up the spine.