It is Advent again; the advent of all those adverts on television that inform us what Christmas is actually (rather than really) about. 

You would think from the present saturation on all channels that our noses were all of mendacious Pinocchio dimensions because perfume – or should I say scent (even though the advertisers don’t) - appears to be what we all want to be informed about. 

An endless succession of impossibly chiselled, slim and glamorous models jostle with your actual Hollywood A-listers to walk on water, descend from Mount Olympus, inhabit surreal baroque landscapes or drive cars that exist only in magazines along ludicrously empty and gleaming roads to tell us, accompanied by seductive French tones, how a squirt of their own particular concoction will render you irresistible to the point of divinity.

I suppose they have to adopt this approach rather than tell us that their very expensive product is made from the poo of a sperm whale, the private parts of a deer, a beaver’s bottom, the fossilised excreta of a hyrax or the glandular secretions of a civet cat.

Apparently none of these beguiling substances are that delightful at the point of creation and the mammals themselves are probably as happy to get rid of them as the perfumers are to benefit from the said summary expulsion.

How it was ever discovered that the assorted processes involved could turn the contents of animals’ cess pits into the most expensive liquids on the planet, when measured by the millilitre, is lost in the mists of time. 

Maybe a caveman who had fallen foul of a civet cat’s wrath spilt some primitive alcohol on himself and found the resultant combination endeared him to his neighbours.

Wind the clock forward a few millennia and the country’s largest holiday celebration seems to require that we all smell better than we did for the rest of the year.

The adverts are invariably lavish and per minute would probably cost more than the majority of feature films.

Then there’s the supermarkets and department stores.  We all look forward to seeing how they can better that one we liked so much last year.

Make way lonely grandpa on the moon for trampolining badgers being watched by envious Buster the boxer; two old teddy bears coming home to see their families; and here coming the lorries full of sugary, fizzy drinks.

It must be Christmas.