Christmas isn't the only time of year dinner is too pricey

The public relations industry seems to work on the basis that if you see a dead horse, you must flog it until its innards are spattered all over the road. Then you must flog it some more.

- JAMES MOORE

This would explain why my inbox has been literally swamped by press releases concerning the cost of Christmas dinner. Guess what? It's going up. A lot. Because of inflation. But you already knew that.

Per Kantar, which produces one of the more authoritative estimates, the cost is now £31 for a typical family of four. That includes turkey (up 15 per cent), Christmas pudding (no change, surprisingly) and a bottle of modestly priced fizz (up 4 per cent) in addition to potatoes, condiments and veg.

Kantar puts the overall increase at 9.1 per cent. That is actually below the official rate of CPI inflation (10.7 per cent in November), the official rate of food price inflation (16.5 per cent) and Kantar's rate of food price inflation (14.6 per cent) which, to the researcher's credit, it has been drawing attention to for months now (in contrast to some of the organisations which have entered this space for public relations purposes).