AS a Christmas treat, I went with friends to the cinema to see the best festive movie of all time. It was, of course, It's A Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart as George Bailey, the kindly man driven by financial ruin to the brink of suicide. He learns, via an unlikely angel, that he's wrong to think his life didn't matter.
He is shown the impact he has had on those around him, from saving his young brother, Harry from drowning in an icy lake, and preventing the local pharmacist, Mr Gower, from accidentally poisoning a child.
His life of sacrifice, giving up on his dreams of college and travel to take over his father's Building and Loan company, means that the poor people of Bedford Falls can get a decent roof over their heads, escaping the over-priced slums owned by the evil banker, Henry Potter.
George is shown the nightmare vision of what life would have been like if he hadn't been born. Bedford Falls is now Pottersville, a sleazy town controlled by Potter, full of callous people like him.
Mr Gower was jailed for the manslaughter of the child and is now a hopeless drunk because George wasn't there to prevent it. He finds his war hero brother's grave because he wasn't there to save him as a child.
The soldiers on the troop carrier that Harry prevented from being bombed during the war all died because there was no Harry to save them.
Laughably, George's wife Mary, becomes a bespectacled old maid doomed to be a librarian, because she never met him.
The final scene, where all of the people George helped in his life, rally round to save him from bankruptcy and scandal, still brings a tear to the eye, no matter how many times you see it.
Among the donations is a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a gift from the angel, Clarence, who writes a note in the flyleaf: "No man is a failure who has friends."
It's a tribute to socialism and the collective spirit, where each person who saves with the Bailey's Building and Loan helps their neighbours, which in turn builds a stable community.
Made in 1946, the film attracted the attention of the FBI and the communist witch-hunters in the House Un-American Activities Committee, who saw its portrayal of the mean banker, Potter, as an attack on capitalism, described by one investigator as a "typical communist trick".
Reviews at the time were mixed and it wasn't a box-office success until many decades later, when its copyright expired and it became a Christmas classic.
It's hard not to see echoes of today's Toryism in Potter, who wants to close down the BBL because it gave out loans too easily to people, thus creating a "discontented rabble instead of a thrifty working class".
It's a sentiment you hear from a government that believes decent welfare payments are a deterrent to work. These are the people who are denying nurses, ambulance crews and railway workers a proper wage to match spiralling inflation, when they comfortably siphon off billions in public money to dodgy contracts for their donors. They enjoy subsidised Westminster restaurants on their £84k paychecks, while the working poor are forced to use foodbanks.
I hope Rishi and co get the chance to tune in, as it's showing on their favourite TV network, Channel Four, at 1.25pm today.
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TODAY should have been Kim Lenaghan's 62nd birthday. She died in September from complications following a fall. This season will be so much the poorer for her absence, as she loved Christmas, even though she complained that being born on Christmas Eve was a pain. "It wasn't a bundle of laughs for me either," her mum, Val, used to say.
Her weekend radio programmes were hugely popular because of her warmth and wit, as well as her great music choices. But most of all her listeners loved her show on Christmas morning, Kim's Twinkly Christmas, which was such a boon to all those slaving over the turkey in kitchens across the land.
She handed out cookery tips – and few could rival her culinary skills - relayed dedications for families near and far as well as playing a host of festive tunes.
I always messaged her to play Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Judy Garland, which usually came towards the end of the programme.
This year I'll play it myself and raise a toast to a woman of many talents, whose gift of friendship will be missed forever.
