Which pages are the most depressing in any newspaper? The obits? Sad, certainly if the subject is known to you but the best obituaries are celebrations of fully-lived lives, not exercises in morbidity. The foreign news? Every day a chronicle of human misery and folly, undoubtedly, but with so many good writers based abroad, the best of their despatches make for a paper’s most compelling reading. What about the sports pages? Well, certainly if you’re a fan of both Aberdeen and Scotland, the football coverage is seldom cheering but, by the time any Scottish football fan reaches 40 the bitter cup of disappointment will have been drained so often the pain will, almost, be dulled. And you can always laugh with Giles Smith, through the tears.

No, the most depressing pages in any newspaper aren’t, thankfully, any of these features. And, mercifully, they only appear once a year. The pages which condemn me to a deep trough of misery from which it takes weeks to emerge are the helpful suggestions about which Christmas presents various star columnists suggest you buy for your loved ones this Yuletide.

These pages, designed to be at once both helpful and intriguing, simultaneously containing useful info about new treats in the shops and revealing insights into the tastes and characters of personality writers, send me into a spiral of horror.

First, they act as a powerful reminder of what a truly awful present-giver I am. Observing that the recommended gifts for the woman in your life range from £200 sunglasses to £300 necklaces, I am acutely conscious that a nice scarf from M&S sits about as comfortably next to these recommendations as June Whitfield next to Kate Moss. And while I’d rather spend my evening with June than either of the others (better chat, less pressure, funnier anecdotes) I’m also aware that saying you prefer the durably reliable (June, a nice scarf) to the flashily modish (Kate, £200 sunglasses) is not a route to success as a present-giver.

Presents for the woman in your life, especially presents at Christmas, have to be extravagant, romantic, pampering, luxurious. As someone whose idea of pampering is taking the tea bag out before I hand my wife her early-morning cuppa I am far from perfectly attuned to the contemporary requirements of present-giving. And every page that lists this year’s must-buys for your special someone starting at £195, purchasable solely from the sort of chi-chi boutiques where the shop assistants look like Sienna Miller’s thinner sister and available only in this season’s signature colours of electric yellow and midsummer taupe only makes me feel more and more out of my depth.

If that’s what every husband is being encouraged to buy, and, therefore what all my wife’s girlfriends are likely to find dangling from the end of their French wood sleigh beds a month hence, then I’d better get with it. But by the time I manage to pluck up my courage and cross the threshold of Rococo Gibbon, or whatever the must-visit shop of the moment is called, I know that every shocking-brown pair of mirrored gardening gloves, or whatever the must-buy item listed in the paper might have been, will have gone. And I will be left, in a shop where even a clothes peg costs £17.99, being asked what I’d like to buy by an assistant who knows I’m terrified of looking stupid and dowdy, and who is also aware that with only days to go before Christmas itself I have to buy something there and then or risk humiliation and pain. So the credit card comes out and I leave a few minutes later with a pair of crème-de-menthe and raspberry leopard-print bedroom mules, as worn by Kylie Minogue at the cast and crew after-party for the launch of the soundtrack from Beowulf, and recommended by Alessandra Mussolini in the Grazia Christmas gift round-up.

But that’s not the only reason why I find these pages grim reading. There’s another aspect to these features which I find even more lowering than the presents . . . for Her. The pages which list the gifts . . . for Him.

Scanning these recommendations and suggestions my own feelings of masculine inadequacy burgeon uncontrollably. Why don’t I want a signature timepiece? Is there something wrong with my testosterone count that means my pace doesn’t quicken at the thought of a new Sony PlayStation, digital camera, PDA, iPhone or Wong and Rollason music centre? Am I the only man left in Surrey who doesn’t play golf? Every one of these lists seems to define masculinity as, essentially, a love of gadgets, a desire to find the most effective way of flaunting your wealth on your wrist, and a handicap under 12. And on that basis I’m even less macho than Graham Norton listening to Judy Garland in a bath of pink champagne.

How many “Gifts for Him” pages this year will have a list of competitively priced secondhand Bulldog Drummonds and Dornford Yateses, advice on where to get straight jeans under £25, pointers on the best bargains in the world of woollen hosiery, guides to affordable (under a tenner) quality German whites and Argentinian reds, hints on where logo-free polo shirts can be found and framed maps of Napoleonic battles? Quite.

As I scan every one of the list of Gifts For Him I recognise that I am condemned for ever to second-class status in the world of men, just as I am likely to be for ever an also-ran in the Perfect Husband This Christmas Awards. No wonder we’ve always preferred Hogmanay in Scotland . . .

Little originality, but BBC good on quality

The BBC’s decision to screen new productions of all 37 Shakespeare plays is, at first glance, excellent news. Having watched many of the productions of the first Bardathon more than 20 years ago I have fond memories of the project. Seeing, say, Sam West attempting a canonical Hamlet for a new generation in the way Derek Jacobi did three decades ago is genuinely exciting.

But (and there’s always a but with the contemporary BBC) the decision to commission this new Shakespeare series points to a broader concern within the Corporation. With Channel 4 developing an ascendancy in the realm of big-ticket culture shows now, licence fee income coming under increasing pressure and mutterings about the amount being spent on star salaries in light entertainment, the BBC clearly feels the need to reoccupy the moral high ground.

A more self-confident BBC might not have felt the need to make such an obvious grab for the preeminent cultural force in English history, might have been more relaxed about pioneering different work – a Shaw revival, a Restoration drama series or perhaps a season of Jacobean revenge tragedies. By picking the Bard the BBC was playing the same game appalling husbands like me play when they do last-minute Christmas shopping on the first floor of Fenwicks – they hope that throwing money at what everyone recognises as quality will make up for a growing lack of originality.

Meat gone to pot

An American friend and I were discussing a fundamental division between our two peoples the other day. Why is it that British dairy produce (cream, milk, cheeses) is so much better than American, while in the US the standard steakhouse cut of beef is so much better than the equivalent in a chain outlet here? What do we do to our cows that they don’t? Or are my friend and I deluded in thinking that whereas we win on dairy the Yanks have the edge on the meat?

Michael Gove is MP for Surrey Heath

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