The Perfect Christmas Present: Aled Jones!

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 40 mins of carol-editing
Watching: Season 3 of 'The Wire', hallelujah!
Hair Day: Adventurous, what with my man Barry having come back from his sojourn in Blackpool. Am sporting an asymmetric tri-coloured look.

All winding down for the Christmas period, although I am already panicking about my huge Drake Music project composition, an application for the PRS Creative Producers scheme and sorting out juice's PRS funding grant which we've just been awarded in order to commission all-round new music uberking Gabriel Prokofiev to write us a big piece. We managed to get the house in order and bedeck a stout Christmas tree (topped with a pink feather boa for that irreverent touch) for our pre-Christmas soiree last night, during which I attempted a look of poise and grace which masked my fear of people getting their mucky shoes on the carpet or spilling their spiced apple/whisky/ginger wine concoctions, none of which of course happened with all of us now being grown-up. I was quite proud of my music selection, all carefully themed around the festive season and failing that anything to do with stars, cold, fire, and other tenuous links; this meant we had everything from Mariah's rousing winter warbler to a quite unabashedly awful heavy metal take on 'O Christmas Tree', to Jeff Buckley's heaven-sent version of Britten's 'Corpus Christi Carol' to Muse's 'Starlight'.

juice rounded off their successful year (national press, Purcell Room, Latitude, BFI, agent, funding grant) by popping to a slick central London studio to be interviewed for BBC Radio 3's 'The Choir' - by seasonal favourite Aled Jones, no less! It's unfortunate that he's most known for his first and last cheesy public outings: 'Walking in the Air' and this year's attempt at a Christmas No. 1 with El Tel; he turned out to be absolutely lovely, a bit naughty and a consummate professional. We recorded two live tunes and were hopefully on ebullient, girly form in our interview, which was great fun. It'll be on in January. Hurrah!