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From Jim Harris, Art Historian

I spent Wednesday this week with some of my oldest friends, Nick and Kate, and Kim.  These are friends I grew up with, went to school with, friends I still love forty-odd years later.  I don’t see them as often as I’d like but sometimes we still need each other. And you all, you lovely guests of Sara, are people who know something about friendship.

David, we got to know you through your friendship with Matt Lucas; Michael and Alfie, you have this this personal festival of love going on right here; Shirley - the joy of Strictly is that everyone is kind – it’s clear we’re watching friends; and Cat - it would have been impossible to be a kid at the turn of the century (which makes us sound like Victorian people) without revelling in your friendship with those lovable-scamps-turned-light-entertainment behemoths, Ant and Dec.

These days, my friend Nick is a doctor, measured and calm, and I could have used his calm, measured friendship the other night when I was hit by a car, riding my bike near Waterloo station.

It wasn’t a hard hit, just a clip from a wing mirror, but it was frightening and I went a little ballistic. I mention this for two reasons.

 First, to apologise to the driver and his passengers, with whom I remonstrated way too robustly. I was horrible and I’m really sorry. And second, to point out that alone, without our friends, it’s very easy to revert to our worst selves.

 My worst self is perpetually, fiercely angry about something.  My daughter Miriam calls it the gift of barely suppressed, fathomless rage, and Jesus’ friend Peter had a worst self that was not unlike that.  When Jesus was arrested, he took out a sword and literally cut a man’s ear off.  But later on, after Peter had let him down yet again, Jesus looked past the betrayal to see a friend he was still prepared to trust.

 The thing about real friends is that when we show them the worst in us, they can somehow still recognise the best – even when we sing flat or write bad gags.  Not that anyone here would ever do that. And the more we are trusted and helped to be our best selves, the more likely we are to overcome our worst.  Which, at Christmas, is surely what we long to do.