As the world tries desperately to come to terms with the Coronavirus and all the changes it has brought to everyday life, it's fair to say that this Christmas might be one unlike any other.
Shopping for presents in the High Street, if it's permitted, will be vastly different. Carol services will sound different, especially if choirs are whittled-down to five singers to comply with the government's social-distancing rules. And, of course, family gatherings will be decimated - unless there are four or fewer people in your entire extended family.
Even the Queen's Christmas Day message will be different, muffled, as it will be, through her face mask.
But one thing that WILL remain the same, is George Michael.
Well, make that two things.
George will still be dead, and the festive ditty 'Last Christmas' will still be blaring out in shopping centres and from the juke box in the pub, even if those two places are deserted.
Michael, real name Giorgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, died on Christmas Day, 2016, in the biggest publicity stunt for a record the world has ever seen. His great opus, however, has lived on in our memories, in our hearts and minds, and, like I said, in pub juke boxes.
Panayiotou was a strange man, and was involved in an unsavory incident with an off-duty policeman in some public toilets several years ago, and this is also worth remembering, at any time of the year, and not just Christmas.
