“Shut up about your pudding with a whole orange, Heston”

LAST WEEK, in a fascinating experiment, a psychologist assembled 59 volunteers — all of them mothers — in a room. He settled each into an armchair with a Santa hat, mince pie and four glasses of sherry, for which, he noted afterwards, they seemed inordinately grateful.

Reassured of their comfort, he then took them one by one into a quiet side room, and asked each mother to answer 10 questions about Christmas.

In a recent interview with the world-renowned Institute of Surveys That Tell You What You Already Know Already, the psychologist has since said: “While I fulfilled my aim of discovering what mothers honestly feel about Christmas, I remain deeply, deeply disturbed by both the experience and the results.