Since 2016 Dad & I have waged sprout war: I’ve hidden them in chocolate, in his toothpaste, he has retaliated by filling my bedsheets with them... It is an even-sided conflict, with both resorting to greater nefariousness & descending to even more underhand deception each year. Last Christmas saw an enforced truce (stuck 500 miles apart) so there was an unspoken understanding upon my homecoming that this year, even though we were both on ultra-high-alert-defcon-1000, something sprouty was going to happen.

Some of you out there may recall that in 2016 I played an excellent Christmas prank on my long-suffering Dad. It worked a treat. Last year I decided to play the long game & didn’t tamper with the confectionary: spooked by the year before, he would not touch a single Ferrero Rocher (which was great because he usually inhales them at 750mph) so there were Ferreros aplenty for the rest of us. I bided my time.