What can you tell me about the Christmas episode of The Weakest Link?
We had some panto characters in there, it looks incredible and the outfits they’ve put on and obviously everybody knows The Weakest Link walk of shame, and what I can confirm is it’s great in fancy dress, it’s really good! We had Gemma Collins, Biggins, Olly Smith was dressed as an elf and looked like he could have been an elf. It’s a really fun episode that one!
How will you be celebrating Christmas this year?
We’ve just moved house, and been trying to for a long time, so I think we are going to have to have everyone to ours. I say ‘have to’ we’d love to have everyone to ours, but the truth is we’ve been politically manoeuvred into a situation where we have to have everyone over.
What will you be watching in your household this Christmas?
I can guarantee you what we’ll be watching is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which is a Ranganathan family tradition, we watch that every year without fail. We’ll mainly watch Christmas movies in our house, Jingle All The Way, Four Christmas, Die Hard, Gremlins. All the Christmas bangers!
What’s your favourite Christmas song and why?
My favourite Christmas song is All I Want For Christmas Is You because there is no other choice, anybody that suggests anything else is a d**khead.
What have your kids asked for from Santa?
They’ve all asked for video games actually, I’ve got a little bit of a problem in that they keep stealing my stuff. I had a Nintendo Switch and they nicked it, so then I got another one, and they nicked that one as well. So they’re obsessed with video games basically, but that’s fine though as it’s stuff I get to use as well.
Any Christmas traditions or anecdotes that you are happy to share?
Our kids grandparents, and everyone will buy them loads of presents and one year they were opening them and I found it absolutely unacceptable at the speed that they were moving through the presents without giving each one due credit, I sort of found it slightly disgusting and I wanted them to be more grateful. So now in our house we stagger the presents, they open a present and they have to spend a certain amount of time interacting and being grateful for that present, then we let them move on and open the next one, and sometimes they’ll get some many it takes them right the way through to the end of boxing day which is great for us.
What do your kids get you for Christmas?
Well apparently I’m really difficult to buy for, so they’ll get me something that’s really wasteful, well not wasteful, but for example last year they bought me a LEGO version of myself which was really impressive except for the fact it had a mobile phone in its hand which I felt was a damning indictment of my parenting, and it was sort of just staring at this phone so I thought it was a nice present but also they are having a bit of a dig.
What are your favourite parts of the Christmas season?
We go to the panto every year, we go to the local one in Crawley. A couple of years ago they got me to do the magic mirror, they were doing Cinderella. Basically I just had to record it once and it would drop down and I’d be part of the show. I got really excited about my kids watching it and we didn’t tell them, so we just went one year, to go and watch it. We waited for the magic mirror to drop, it dropped, I appeared on screen and honestly, I cannot explain how little a reaction they gave. It was unbelievable, I was buzzing, and they just went “oh, you’re the magic mirror”. What an absolute waste of time.
Interviews supplied by BBC
