Unfortunately, I have found it difficult to achieve optimum conditions for my solitary pursuit (witty and trenchant TV criticism, rather than the other thing) over Christmas, which tends to be a fairly lively celebration round my gaff, making few allowances for my duty to my reading public.

Here is the problem. Some years ago, through no fault of my own, I married a Catholic girl and acquired numerous relatives, who now gather in their hundreds each Christmas to be joyful and triumphant by our fireside.

While I have no objection to enjoying a few drinks in convivial company, the combined effects of a house full of strong liquor, chocolates and Catholics make conditions less than ideal for the levels of concentration needed.

It is not that I am barred from switching on the TV during the gathering of the clans. It is just that several of our guests seem to be on a mission to disprove the oft expressed opinion that television is a conversation killer.

The older ones especially look on TV as more of an adjunct to social intercourse, using it to divert the conversation from the usual favoured area of who has got cancer (is it just me, or are Catholics obsessed with terminal disease?) into a general commentary on popular culture.

Example: during the showing of the film Some Like It Hot, apropos of nothing as far as I could tell, my mother in-law asks, "How old do you think Des O'Connor is?" Mid to late 60s was my guess, while others bid as high as 75; and so the sublime comic skills of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon flicker away unnoticed in the corner, while the conversation meanders drunkenly into various O'Connor-related areas. How, for instance, did he get so damned shiny? Is it Cuprinol, or that stuff that does exactly what it says on the tin?

"He's had three wives, and hundreds of girlfriends," says my wife's mother, prompting some frankly unworthy remarks about preserving your wood. The upshot is that I am deputed to log on to the internet and find out the real age of the burnished entertainer. This proved not to be quite as straightforward as you might think, his official website being somewhat coy on the topic, but, in case you are interested: born Stepney, east London, 1932, seems to be the consensus.

At some point later in the day I had to plug in the laptop again to find out the symptoms of Bright's Disease (don't ask), all of which meant that my deconstruction of the Cliff Richard Tennis Classic on Sky Sports on Christmas Day may be less than complete.

For a station with three channels dedicated to live sport, Christmas Day must be an absolute nightmare for Sky Sports, which is the only charitable explanation for the presence of Sir Cliff.

Mostly, Sky's Christmas schedule is taken up with pre-recorded reviews of the year, and events in which British interest is less than avid, like the World Pool Trick-shots competition from the Netherlands, or tenpin bowling from Honduras. (To anybody who tuned in to Honduran tenpin bowling at three o'clock on Christmas afternoon, by the way, I doff my cap for the kind of eloquent comment on Christmas I could not hope to get away with round here.)

The Cliff Richard Tennis Classic was something of a misnomer in that there was not much tennis involved and it was only a classic in the same sense as the old Ford motor vehicle of that name from the 1960s; a rusty old vehicle, lovingly preserved, but of little use in a new century.

A glance at some of the participants will convince you of the aptness of the metaphor: Jasper Carrott, disc jockey Mike Read, John Lodge of the Moody Blues and the British tennis stars (an oxymoron right up there alongside airline food and Ricky Martin's girlfriends) Chris Wilkinson and Sam Smith. Watching this line-up, of course, involved me in more discussions, specifically explaining to our incredulous younger guests that Jasper Carrott is famous as a comedian.

What the tournament lacked in sporting content, it made up for in Cliff, of which there was an abundance.

"Everybody loves him," explained one of the audience in Birmingham.

Wrong. Some of us whose first experience of pop music dates back to the early 60s have always resented Cliff for being described as "the British Elvis". Yes kids, he really was. British Elvis, indeed. In the same way, no doubt, that lime juice cordial is the British Jack Daniels.

He was just the ticket, though, for his adoring fans, who appeared from the audience shots to be almost exclusively comfortably upholstered ladies between 45 and 65, possibly bused in from Sutton Coldfield for the occasion, and rather unwisely wearing souvenir bright yellow T-shirts.

Still it did remind me of an old joke I was able to reprise for the assembled kibitzers (Q: What has a hundred legs and no teeth? A: The front row at a Daniel O'Donnell concert), and when one fan said "Cliff is part of Christmas, really," it underlined the comforting truth that at least it does only come once a year.

(I must have been into my sixth year of doing Screen Break at the time, and in what I modestly submit P.G.Wodehouse would describe as prime mid-season form.  Oh, all right, it's a collection of fairly dodgy jokes, but there is an argument to say that's something The Guardian could perhaps do with more of...)