Stevie Riks

The All Star Impression Show was ITV1's big novelty entertainment show for Boxing Day, wherein celebrities did impressions of other celebrities - except for Joe Pasquale, who came on and was Joe Pasquale, in an oddly unconvincing manner.

For weeks before broadcast, ITV1 had promoted the show as if it were the magnificent glazed goose of its Christmas schedules, to be placed on our table to cries of "God bless you, good broadcasting sir!" In the event, The All Star Impression Show was essentially ITV1 bringing a roast cat to the dinner table, garnished with minced rat stuffing.

Eamonn Holmes as Elvis Presley kicked off proceedings. You need not ask which era Elvis he chose. This was not '68 Comeback Special; it was more 99 Flake Comeback Special. Indeed, in sunglasses and goitre, Holmes could have removed the cape and gone on to knock off both Roy Orbison and Carlos the Jackal, but sadly lacked the imaginative expanse to do so.

He was followed by what appeared to be Arsène Wenger doing a camp Jimmy Corkhill from Brookside - a frankly mind-blowing concept - but which perusal of the credits revealed to be a comedian called Stevie Riks doing Paul O'Grady. I hope that the confusion over this conveys some measure of how surreally awful the whole thing was, like a collection of your more lacklustre in-laws suddenly deciding to put on a revue, apparently written by their parents and occasionally studded with someone from Coronation Street.

Things reached their "WTF?" apogee with a sketch that involved Bobby Davro as Chris Tarrant, the wrinkles drawn on to his face with black felt-tip, and Les Dennis playing Gary Barlow as someone with no distinguishing physical or conversational features whatsoever, in a bath. Naked.

The skit revolved around Barlow trying to guess how Tarrant washed - "You gonna use your loofah?" - and peaked with Dennis rising, wholly naked, from the bath, genitals covered in a distressingly meagre slick of bath-foam. It may even have been Matey.

This, then, is why so many of us found ourselves at the bottom of the garden at 4am, sitting on a wet trampoline with a bad uncle. This, then, was Christmas.

Caitlin Moran, The Times, 2nd January 2010