There may be troubles ahead, but here’s my Christmas recipe for keeping the pecker up

I tried, I really did, right to the bitter end. No column has made more effort than Any Other Business to spot pinpoints of light on this year’s dark economic horizon. If there was a Spectator Optimist of the Year award, I’d walk it. But with the Chancellor and the Governor drowning out the carol singers with what has become a dirge-duet about the long, hard and winding road to recovery — and with evidence even I can’t deny of an autumn setback after the late summer bounce — my self-appointed role in the national conversation has begun to look more eccentric than ever. All I can do at this stage is invite you to charge your glass for a toast or two, and offer my Christmas recipe for staying cheerful against the odds.

Here goes. First — this might sound a bit odd, I know — wear bedsocks. They guarantee a refreshing extra half-hour’s sleep because you’re not woken by cold feet. You can even reset the heating to come on later, making a useful saving to spend on the rest of this recipe and other diversions; if you’re a pensioner, you can blow your Winter Fuel Payment on lingerie and recreational drugs.

Next, offer a home to a golden retriever. They’re infectiously happy, surprisingly cheap to run, will impress your friends with party tricks — mine likes tossing live hedgehogs — and will agree with anything you say so long as it has enough emphatic consonants to sound like ‘biscuit’. ‘Vince Cable’s a Trotskyite!’ Wag, of course he is. ‘Wicked bankers should be made to sweep the streets!’ Of course they should, wag-wag, where’s the biscuit?

Having got the basics right at home, book a table at Brasserie Zédel in Sherwood Street off Piccadilly Circus. It’s huge, stylish, bustling, astonishingly good value — and all the smart people you’d really hate to sit next to are too busy power-lunching at the Wolseley up the road.