High Five: Paul Mosley's Christmas Celebrations

In the late '70s / early '80s, Woolworths ran ‘event’ Christmas ads with light entertainment celebrities of the day dressed as elves and circus clowns joyfully singing the festive praises of must-have gift ideas like blank cassettes and car polish. They do the rounds now on Twitter for everyone to have a little laugh at because they are indeed naff and naive etc but - bear with me - they hit the spot for nostalgia. Christmas is all about nostalgia after all: brand awareness, spectacle and memorability. Although there are loads so (certainly in my memory) they do tend to merge into one. I’ve chosen the one with Joe Brown in because I met him once and he was great.

I’m not doing a John Lewis ad because you all know them, but this was similarly an ‘event’ campaign informed by that era. Considering how easily it could have been tone-deaf, I think it actually hits all the right emotional notes. Our ECD Andrew ‘Barnsley’ Wood did the VFX work and there's a terrific balance of the epic and the intimate. The visual craft and story telling are unquestionably superb - as you would expect from a Ringan project - and they resonate all the better because the brand also put their money where their mouth is raising thousands of pounds for The Royal British Legion.

OK, so a little bit of cynicism is funny at Christmas. This is a terrific parody with no sneering and full respect shown to the source material. The level of skill on display, no corners cut, really makes it. You can easily imagine the cheap, smart arse, unfunny version of this set up so it's especially great they got the original team back and did it justice.

It's Christmas, so indulge me, please. Yes, I am totally including this one because it's a Rascal job, but it will now always mean a lot to me. Until this year, I was so immersed in the brand partnerships side that I'd not seen the production ‘front line’ close up for a while. Coming to a start up, where everyone is the front line, it was brilliant and challenging and exciting and fun to suddenly be right back in those conversations about how we can make this the best it can be. It's great efficient story telling, a likeable riff on what could have been an advertising in joke and it looks stunning, sweet and smart without being cynical, a proper Christmas campaign.

This is the reason I decided to do a Christmas themed High Five. Representation matters. I’m an ‘older gay man’ myself these days and I hadn’t properly thought about the ‘who on screen represents me?’ question, perhaps because so many people we see could represent me. This film quietly and tenderly shows believable romantic behaviour in a fantastical setting, with protagonists who are very definitely gay without tokenism. It struck a massive chord, and made me realise what I am used to not seeing. I just blubbed again re-watching it for this, I love everything about it. Merry Christmas High Five and LBB, may Gay Santa bless everyone!