Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a Very Happy New Year from Artists UK. We hope you had a fabulously brilliant time and are ready for an excellent New Year.

I was in Germany over Christmas and I’ve always been astounded that the Germans have such a poor reputation for having a sense of humour. It has never seemed to me as if they lack one but as you’ll see from the following they have an innovative one as I doubt that we’d ever come come up with an expression like the one I just came across - “Ich muss aufpassen, sonst habe ich zwei!”

All us boring lot can say is that we’d better keep an eye on it or someone will nick it. They came up with the above, which translates as, “I’d better be careful or I’ll have two of them!” Of course, it may be limited to north Germany where there are a lot of different expressions due to the prevalence of an older dialect called Platdeutsch (they say “Moin” instead of Guten Morgen for instance .. or at any time of day in fact). The Platdeutsch is closer to Dutch and has many nouns closer to English than high German (words for door, water etc etc).

German children also have the advantage of getting their Christmas presents earlier. They get them on Christmas Eve rather than on Christmas Day. They go off to their room for an hour or so while Santa does his rounds and come out to get their presents in the early evening. So now, if your children ask how Santa manages to get round all the houses in the world in one night you can tell them he distributes some presents in some countries on Christmas Eve. I’m sure there will be the inevitable rejoinder of why can’t we have ours earlier! … coz yor not German that’s why