The French, I-don’t-know-what-you-call-him, Bernard Tapie, is preparing for more court time after The Guardian reports he will be in the dock on charges relating to embezzlement and misuse of public funds.

My mother is giving my boy £50 for Christmas. I’m getting £100. My boy is 16, and I’m 42. As a child of four, growing up on a council estate in Reddish, Stockport, I never got much at Crimbo. There was no gratitude for what I did get, only complaints about what I didn’t get.

So, here we are, having a transatlantic phone conversation about materialism, wealth, and mean as fuck fathers who suddenly mellow out during old age.

“How much will an extra million increase your happiness if you already have multi-millions,” I ask my son.