Ice skating courts disaster with the Big Day too close

Up and down the land the Christmas market season is under way with all kinds of festive fun setting up camp in our towns and cities.

- with Mike Hill

Aside from gift stalls, fairground rides and food galore, this usually means the annual appearance of outdoor rinks for those who have watched one too many episodes of Dancing on Ice and feel far too confident.

It is a opportunity for seasonal shoppers to take the chance to down a mulled wine or two and then break an ankle in time for the Big Day.

How skating became a part of the fabric of Christmas when there were no ice rinks in the nativity story is not clear.

Not least because it is a tale famously set in a desert state.