³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

A belated Happy New Year to you all and may I wish you many more of them.

May I also make a confession here and say that in the last few days I have been extremely mean to anybody who has told me that the snow looks beautiful.

I spent 2 hours driving over to Richmond to film the Mummers with their wonderful play a couple of days before Christmas and not only was it cancelled because of the snow, but I had to drive 4 hrs along the A66 with lorries jack-knifing all around me and only just got through before the police closed the road in both directions.

Coming over Stainmore and still mightily dischuffed that I hadn't seen one of the best traditional plays in these islands I peered into the blizzard and remembered that it was close to here that Eric Bloodaxe, King of Orkney and King of Dublin, fought his last battle. It was also close by that Dickens set Dotheboys Hall the terrible school run by Wackford Squeers in . It was based on a real school at Bowes and caused such a stir that the school closed down.

How mighty was the pen in those days.

The film I've been working on will be out next Christmas and is a celebration of a Yorkshire Christmas. Consequently we have filmed traditional carols in Ecclesfield, South Yourkshire, folk busker singing A Ploughboy's Christmas in Stonegate, York and (this weekend hopefully) and the in Wentworth, Yorkshire.

I think it's going to be really good ­ not because I'm in it but because there's so much really
interesting stuff ­ put Yorkshire and Christmas together and you can't go far wrong.

However, I have driven more than a thousand miles through the worse conditions I have ever known in the course of making this film so (at the risk of repeating myself) let me say that the next person to tell me they like the snow runs a risk of hearing the kind of language the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ don't let me use in the show.

Happy new year!