Culture

Best gifts, worst gifts: Max Bygraves LP

December 05, 2011
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Ian Rankin

Best present I’ve given: I ordered a VW Beetle for my wife one Christmas and had it delivered to the hotel where we were staying. Christmas morning we went for a walk. She saw the car and said how lovely it was—at which point I handed her the key and told her to take it for a spin.

Worst present I’ve given: my parents got some rubbish from me when I was young. I still remember the Max Bygraves LP that my mother never played…

Trevor Phillips

When I was 12, being sent thousands of miles away from my family to live on the edge of the Guyana rainforest, my mother created a new outfit for me. She magicked a new pair of shiny tan shoes from the Ridley Road market, bullied a yard of cloth off a bemused trader, and made me a new jacket. No child could have been better turned out. Problem: the shoes were both left-footed winkle-pickers, which turned the journey into a 12-hour torture session. And the beautifully tailored Harris tweed jacket would have been perfect for the Orkneys, but not 80-degree tropical heat. The truth is that the gifts didn’t matter; it is the love of the giver that stays in the memory.

David Baulcombe

The best gifts to me came with my chromosomes—my powerful intellect and fine looks. The worst gifts came from the same place—my overactive imagination and poor sense of humour.

I have given the same chromosomes to my four children. It is their good fortune that the genetics of imagination and humour are rather complex. They do not resemble me in those characteristics although they are all rather good looking.

More: Jemima Khan, Jon Snow and others tell Prospect about their best presents—and the worst—here