I have bad news, I'm afraid. I know how devastating my timing is, given that this is the third week of December - and most of us are spending what little free time we have hurling ourselves at capitalism, screaming: “I have to buy a thing! For an aunt! Oh my gawwwwwdineedathingforan-aunt!” But however many department stores you run around, websites you click through or local shops you scuff around in - wondering if a six-pack of Stella and a broom could ever be appropriate presents - there is, in actual fact, not a single gift that is suitable to give to any adult, ever. Never. Nothing. Not a thing. All presents for anyone over the age of Action Man/Barbie - and I say this with more than three decades of consideration informing my prognosis - are inappropriate, without exception. Consider:

The dressing gown. Generally seen as an absolute staple present, particularly for men - given that you can't give them what they really want for Christmas (steak, swords, pornography, a rodeo horse, more hair on top, a second-hand record shop that was sealed up in 1979 and has only just been rediscovered). There can scarcely be an uncle, grandad or father alive who will not be receiving a dense, floppy rectangle of gift-wrapped flannel this yuletide.

But can you really give a dressing gown as a gift? Should you? Consider the function of dressing gowns in an individual's life. They are not items that wear out terribly easily. They do not encounter a great many inclement climatic incidents - what with a blameless life led mainly shuffling between the bedroom and the toaster, with the occasional weekend scurry to put out the recycling. And because of this life of almost unparalleled garment-indolence, a dressing gown never really ... wears out. I bought my current one - a blue fleece zip-up, £23, Bhs Oxford Street - when I was 17. I was a virgin then, and yet I shall probably die in that dressing gown, surrounded by my 900 great-great grand-droids.

Can people really take it upon themselves to select a garment that will become a lifelong companion to the giftee? And indeed - by virtue of bed-positioning, bedroom door-peg and so on - might well be the first and last thing he sees for the next 80 years? Why, you might just as well be choosing a man a wife! And I've done that before, and it very rarely works!

Chocolates. At almost any other time of the year a sumptuous box of chocolates is as welcome as a reverent, yet desperate, kiss on the lips from Jack Bauer, top sexy action hero of the hit series 24. But that's all the other times of the year. Christmas is different - a time when one is eating so much chocolate that it becomes like a dietary mainstay. Indeed, once the tins of Roses, Quality Street and Miniature Heroes are opened, it may very well form the entirety of one's diet: leading to the unique festive thought process, whereby one thinks, “Jeez, I've been eating a lot of chocolate. I need to calm down. I need to get me one of my five-a-day”, and then eats an orange crème. A sane person cannot buy a loved one Christmas chocolates.

In fact, food of any kind. Shortbread? Pâté? Stilton? Cake? As a gift? Are you insane? The average weight gain over Christmas is half a stone. This is not a time people need more food being brought into their homes. Their houses are full of food. There's more potato-and-wheat-based snacks in their houses than there is air. People are having to eat their way through six tubes of BBQ Pringles just to get to their front door. Their sofas are covered in Dundee cake, ham and Kettle Chips. The youngest child was last sighted trapped under a “family size” variety bag of Walkers Crisps the size of a double duvet. Put more food into these benighted, chow-swamped houses? You might as well give a bathtub of water to a drowning man.

Perfume. Another staple, but WHY WHY WHY? The very first thing one learns about perfume - well, maybe the third thing, after “Don't spray it into your eyes. Or, however desperate you are, use it as a mixer” - is that it reacts differently according to the wearer's skin. What smells like the satin-skinned sex-glow of Monroe on you might smell like a cat's whoopsie in a privet hedge on me. And vice versa.

Who, then - given these solid, scientific facts - would dare to second-guess the chemical sex-experiment that is squirting Joop! on to Uncle Wrong? Or Britney Spears's Curious into the face of Cousin Dreary? No, perfume, like whether to wear a ra-ra skirt, and where you stand vis-à-vis fascism, must be a personal decision.

“Joke” presents. Flying pig mobiles? Margaret Thatcher nutcrackers? A “Party In Progress!” kit, consisting of two tiny traffic cones and a reel of police incident tape, reading “Party in Progress!” Is this a true expression of how you feel for someone in your life? Or just another bin-bag full of capitalism's numbing flotsam, for them to cart down the charity shop on January 11? If you experience genuine difficulties in buying a “normal” “unfunny” present, try this visualisation: a Third World orphan crouching in a sweatshop, staring down at a “Grow Your Own Boobies” kit, and wondering just what kind of country Britain is.

Subscription to a specialist magazine. Message: “You cannot change your mind about how much you like off-road biking/budgerigars/MILF-porn for a WHOLE YEAR.”

“Charming” home-made vouchers for wives and mothers made by husbands and teenage children, offering to pay the bearer “One Sexy Massage!”, “One Clearing-Up The Kitchen!”, etc. Hang on. Are you suggesting that sexy massages and simple housework are commensurate - in gift-worth - to balloon rides over Bath, cocktails with diamond rings in them or a handsome leather-bound medieval dictionary? These things are a woman's basic human rights! These are the stuff of simple day-to-day-courtesy! I cannot believe you are fobbing me off with this! Oh my God! What are you going to give me on my birthday? The chance to look out of a window? Toast? You have RUINED Christmas. Screw you. SCREW YOU!

Times Recommends

• Bank charges hit us for being human
• Sorry, Father, thou still shalt not steal
• The shed where Santa’s failures go to die