SARAH VINE: My horror at unwrapping a corset at Christmas – and why I know the perfect gift for any woman

Every Christmas, as part of my charity work, I offer an informal shopping advice service to spouses and significant others of friends who find the prospect of buying a gift for their wives/girlfriends and, increasingly, teenage daughters, extremely daunting.

Men who think nothing of going into war zones, or standing up at the Commons post box, or floating companies on the stock exchange, can be reduced to anxious (and rather cute) little boys at the prospect of them will be wrong.

Why men find buying gifts so difficult is an interesting question. Because there’s no doubt that they do.

While women often view Christmas shopping as an enjoyable leisure activity, men seem to view it as a test, a kind of gift-giving ordeal. Most prefer a root canal treatment. That’s probably why they leave it until the last minute – often with disastrous consequences.

The worst example was a friend who, after putting it off forever, concluded that the local kitchenware store was the only option left on Christmas Eve.

For example, on Christmas Day his loved one received a cheese grater – a chic designer one, but a cheese grater nonetheless.

The cheese grater is a classic in the genre. Not only does it show shocking last-minute action and a lack of precaution, it is also such a domestic routine that it is more of an insult than a gift. It reads, “You’re so low on my priority list that I forgot to get you something, and when I finally remembered, I got an everyday kitchen utensil.”

It would have been better if he had just given a card and some cash.

Crucially, the first rule of buying gifts is that it should be something the recipients would never buy themselves.

A cheese grater is a necessity, just like a colander, kettle or toilet roll holder. A gift is something you dream of, but that you would never buy yourself because it is too luxurious or too expensive. It can have a practical purpose – that’s no problem – but it must be extra.

A good example is the Dyson Airwrap. Almost every woman I know longs for it. I’ve had long discussions with friends about their merits, and whether their price can ever be justified. They are also multigenerational in their appeal: my daughter and her friends all want one. And yet I don’t know anyone who bought one for themselves. At almost £500 it’s too indulgent.

The same goes for personal care items, which most men consider a minefield but women covet, even those who claim they don’t.

For example, a man may worry about the consequences of buying skin care for a loved one, but if it’s a luxury enough, it won’t matter. No woman will turn her nose up at a jar of Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream, or something equivalent.

The most difficult gifts for men to buy are clothing items. This is because men almost always tend to buy things they want their partners to wear, rather than what their partners actually wear.

Indeed, I once unwrapped a beautiful Rigby & Peller corset, which would no doubt have looked great on Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, but on me was more Rocky Horror Picture Show. I felt terrible because I knew it must have cost a fortune, and it also made me feel hopelessly inadequate – resulting in my normal Marks & Spencer underwear not being enough.

The other problem with the corset was that because I was so completely out of character, I wondered if the person involved secretly wished I was someone else. Which, since he did indeed flee with someone else shortly afterwards (who would have confidently carried off a Rigby & Peller corset), turned out to be true.

In that regard, the old saying “It’s the thought that counts” may be true in more ways than one.

On that note, don’t fall for the “Oh, don’t worry about me, I don’t need anything” trick. No woman ever means that.

Cost is also not necessarily a guarantee of success. In fact, in some ways there is nothing worse than a pointlessly expensive gift that is all money and has no class.

Even worse are gifts that are essentially gifts for the buyer. Theoretically, the cheese grater can fall into this category, but also all garden equipment and/or furniture and items such as televisions.

A friend’s husband once gave her a bubble bath. Even though she may have only used it once, she’s never taken it out!

So gentlemen, it’s very simple: a gift doesn’t have to be super meaningful, super expensive or ultra complicated. It just has to be something that shows a little effort and reflects that you’ve been paying attention.

Or, if that doesn’t work, a Dyson Airwrap.

To my mother’s rescuers: Gracias!

It is sometimes tempting to think that there are no good people left in the world. But what happened last week after my mother fell and hurt her leg proved otherwise. She was in Spain and needed an ambulance. In an attempt to help, I googled the phone number of the nearest bar and explained the situation in my stilted Spanish. The staff then came to Mom’s aid, gave her a stiff drink and called an ambulance. The kindness of strangers: the best Christmas gift ever.

Not so big, Ariana

Ariana Grande’s role as Glinda the Good Witch in the film Wicked has won her millions of young followers. But it looks like the real Ariana, in the photo, isn’t as sweet as she seems, as she reportedly became close to her co-star Ethan Slater while still married to Dalton Gomez. Maybe not the role model Hollywood had in mind…

More BBC bias

Why is the BBC refusing to play Keir Starmer’s parody single, Freezing This Christmas by Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers? I’m old enough to remember The Beat singing the anti-Thatcher anthem Stand Down Margaret. With Starmer even more unpopular than Maggie in her first term, the BBC is showing its true political colours. And on top of that, all download proceeds go to Age UK.

Labor continues its agenda of leveling up. In its quest to remove “middle class bias” from the school curriculum, the Latin Excellence Program is being scrapped. God forbid that the next generation of students in state schools should have access to something as enlightening as the classics.

It’s unbelievable that Rachel Reeves’ National Insurance has hit wages and 45 per cent of charity donations are going into the coffers. Literally: stealing from the charity tin. And they say the Tories are the nasty party…

One of Donald Trump’s chief strategists has described Lord (Peter) Mandelson as an ‘idiot’. Considering that our new ambassador to the US once described Trump as a “danger to the world” and “little less than a white nationalist and racist,” that’s a positive diplomatic start.

If Sir Keir Starmer is so keen to abolish the Lords, why has he nominated thirty new colleagues, including Sue Gray (presumably for ‘services to sewing up Boris Johnson’)?

Prince Andreas is reportedly so depressed that he has stopped walking his late mother’s corgis, which were left in his care. If dogs can’t cheer you up, it must be really bad.