othing makes me feel more Christmassy than going through a mountain of ES party pictures to choose the highlights of 2005.

Gratifyingly, this year, lots of pretty girls chose to wear big, colourful dresses. (Please could the frequently photographed be kind enough not to wear black? It might be fashionable, but it does so disappear on a page.) I went to a few of them, but the most intriguing party was the one I couldn't make.

I received an email the next day from a PR: 'How nice to meet you last night!

Sorry it was such a crush when we met! You were so funny when you said you were worried about becoming "celebrity roadkill"!' I was tempted not to let her know that this good-natured wit had just spotted my name on the list and blagged their way in One of this year's party spectacles didn't make our top ten because it was in Monaco. But Fashion Rocks, held in October, was nothing if not a glitzy affair. Our cover girl Diane Kruger was on my table and, at the end of a long night, we decided to head for a taxi together.

People are always quick to point out that standing around being photographed in a party dress can hardly be called work; but if you ask me, looking as good at the end of the night as at the beginning takes real career commitment.

Watching Diane gamely negotiate her way to our car through strange Monegasque autograph hunters, while smiling for the photographers, it dawned on me how much worse it would be for her if no one batted an eyelid when she hit the red carpet.

Talking of commitment, it's good to know that, despite her recent illness, Baroness Thatcher showed her mettle (yet again) by turning up to open Rocco Forte's new hotel, Brown's in Mayfair. How the Thatchers continue to fascinate us. In many ways, Mark and Carol are anything but 'Thatcher's children'. The allure of corporate success or conventional family life seems to have bypassed them both. After last year's too-goodtobe-true saga of the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, involving Mark and as many mercenaries as a Forsyth thriller (his mother's favourite author, naturally) now we have a star turn from his sister Carol, crowned Queen of the Jungle.

Though undoubtedly a warm and charming person, she's really just as off-the-wall as her brother.

Years ago, I was sent to interview her in Klosters, where she lived an odd exiled existence in a chalet with a handsome, shaggyhaired ski instructor 15 years her junior.

Even in the austere surroundings of the Alps she was wearing her trademark Christmas tree jewellery gob-stopper earrings, cracker rings, Aladdin bangles, enough to make the Queen look underdone at the State Opening of Parliament.

I met some of his family there, Swiss hoteliers, who were clearly completely mystified by Carol.

Marco the toyboy seemed both devoted to her and rather bright (he had worked in computers in Zurich but decided he was better suited to life as an off-piste guide).

They still live together in Klosters, although he says they're an item, and she says they're not.

Who knows what to make of that?

Carol has inherited some of her mother's exuberance, charisma and natural authority, although it was the sweetness, inherited from her father Denis, that probably won her the show.

The other seasonal subject that's taking over my life at the moment is the war of the turducken. A turducken for the uninitiated (it's bird flu united, surely) is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, an American take on a Henry VIII-style poultry extravaganza. One entered my life a few days ago and its sheer bulk dictated that it must be stored in my parents-in-law's freezer.

Since then, all has not been well in the family, who are split down the middle as to what to do with it. My in-laws, in proper Yorkshire tradition, feel that such a large bird (or birds) should be the main event on Christmas Day; why buy a turkey when you already have a turducken? There are those, like my husband and his brother, who feel that the very concept of a turducken is deeply wrong, an insult to bird dignity, to cooking, to one's stomach, even to Christmas itself.

And those like my sisters-in-law, who find the idea strangely compelling.

They are not alone.

There are many websites even a song with its own video dedicated to turduckens by those who've become obsessed with them. I am capitalising on the battle to appear both easygoing ('We could always have it on Boxing Day') and pleasingly frugal ('I think your sons should be happy with what they're given') to my in-laws. It's not Christmassy to take sides, so I won't. Happy Christmas.

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