Rob Scratchit took a deep breath. You can do this, Rob Scratchit, he said to himself. With a trembling webbed hand (he was a frog, by the way) he knocked on Karl’s door.

“What?” yelled a voice.

“Mr Snooge, sir…” Rob began.

“Open the fucking door if you want to talk to me, I can’t hear you if you stand outside the door fucking mumbling to yourself, stupid frog!” Rob smacked himself on the forehead. Stupid Rob! Stupid, stupid Rob! He pushed the door open with his nose. Karl Snooge, the much feared and hated loan shark, sat at his desk, one hand delving into the biggest bowl of Quavers Rob had ever seen in order to shovel them into his mouth by the handful, the other frantically tapping at his games controller. He was playing GTA 5 and listening to “Tom Sawyer” by Rush, as usual.

“What is it?” Karl snapped.

“If you please, sir, it appears to be closing time…”

“Ohhhh great!” yelled Karl, before hurling his controller across the room. “I drove off a cliff and died! Thanks a lot, Rob!” He grabbed the bowl of Quavers with both hands and poured the remaining crisps down his throat. He hurled the bowl across the room too, then saw Rob still cowering there. “Are you still here?” he asked. “I’m going home. This place sucks anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow at 8.” Rob sighed. They had to go through this every year. He steeled himself to have the same conversation again for the tenth fucking time.

“But tomorrow is Christmas Day, sir,” he said joylessly.

“Fine. 8:30 then.”

“If you please, sir, half an hour off hardly seems customary for Christmas Day.” Karl was trying to wrap his scarf around his neck but it had become hopelessly entangled. He had currently wrapped it around his eyes and was staggering around bumping into things.

“How much time IS customary, you fucking nerd?” he mumbled before knocking the hat-stand to the ground. It landed painfully on his toe and he began to hop around the office shouting “Ow, my toe!” Rob took a deep breath. He just couldn’t do it any more.

“Do we have to do this?” he said. “Do we have to act like you have no idea what Christmas is? Like…come on. You know what Christmas is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” shouted Karl, tugging hard at the scarf which had now become fully entangled around his neck and was choking him. His face was bright red, his eyes bulging out of his face.

“You do! Every year you eventually agree to give me the entire day off and…”

“The entire day?” asked Scrooge, spittle flying from his mouth.

“Yes, come on, you know this!” Rob pleaded. “Can we just cut to the chase?” Rob looked pityingly at Karl Snooge, who was now on his hands and knees making the most horrific noises, like a cat trying to cough up a hairball. Rob could see it was hopeless. He resigned himself to the usual rigmarole.

“If you please, sir,” he said in a joyless monotone, “why open the business tomorrow? Other businesses will be closed, you’ll have nobody to do business with. It’ll waste a lot of expensive coal for the fire.” Karl staggered back to his feet, having escaped from the coils of his scarf, which he now threw to the ground before beating the shit out of it with a poker.

“Fine,” he said. “Don’t even care, to be honest. I’ll probably just stay home and eat a whole bar of Dairy Milk Oreo or something while you’re eating chestnuts with your stupid wife.”

“Ok. Thank you,” said Rob before heading for the door. He stopped, and turned back one more time.

“Mr Snooge, sir? Why do you pretend to not know what Christmas is?” Karl would not make eye contact. He stared at the wall, eyes wide open, pretending he hadn’t heard. “Mr Snooge?” Rob repeated. Karl had parted his lips into a snarl but was still not blinking.

“It’s just…I’ve been working for you for a decade, and in that time there obviously have been occasional moments where you’ve opened up to me about your past, so I know that pretty much your entire life up to this point has revolved around Christmas.” Karl’s tongue poked out between his teeth, but whether this gesture meant he was now listening was unclear. Rob decided to soldier on. “For instance, I know that you literally chose your profession, which is the most important thing to you in your life, at Christmas. And I also know that your first employer regularly threw Christmas parties, and that you met your girlfriend at one of them.” Karl’s eyelid twitched. “And I also know that you were dumped by your girlfriend on Christmas Day. And I understand that that must have been painful and might have an impact on your feelings about the holiday, but you also then went into business with someone you met while working for that first employer, and ran this business with him for several decades. And, like…surely he must have mentioned Christmas to you at various points during that time? Like, you guys used to go to Christmas parties together every year. So I just don’t buy this whole thing about how you literally don’t know what it is or what people do for it. It’s kind of crazy to me.” Rob watched Karl carefully. Karl was now standing on one leg and vibrating intensely.

“I guess you must really miss your friend since he died, right?” he hazarded. “Are you doing ok?” Karl slowly lowered the leg and turned his head to finally look at Rob.

“Thanks a lot, Rob,” he said, “for mentioning my dead business partner. I’d been trying not to think about him because when I think about him he comes to my house as a ghost and he rattles his chains at me and tells me to change my life.” Rob nodded sympathetically. Grief was a complicated thing, so he just tried to be a good listener.

“That must be very painful,” he said.

“He pretends to be my door knocker,” Karl added. Rob blinked.

“What?”

“He puts a big metal ring in his mouth and pretends to be my door knocker. He walks around my flat shaking his chains and saying “Knock knock knock, it’s the knocker.”” Rob wasn’t sure what to say. The room felt very quiet all of a sudden. “Forget it, I shouldn’t have said anything,” Karl said, stomping towards the door. “I guess I’ll just go home and hang out with my friend’s awful ghost – some fucking Christmas!” And with that, he was gone. Rob rolled his eyes as a song began to play.

The door slammed open again as Karl lurched back in.

“And don’t sing that fucking song you sing about closing up the shop for Christmas!” he yelled. “It’s really rude that you wait until I’m gone before you sing it!” Rob stared at his feet, abashed. “Honestly,” Karl continued, “people wonder why I don’t like Christmas.”

***

***

Rob was just about to sit down to Christmas dinner with his beautiful, loving family when there was a knock at the door.

“Oh!” he said, “I wonder who that could be?”

“Maybe it’s a present!” shouted his wretched son Tiny Tom excitedly, before coughing up some blood.

“Now, now, Tiny Tom,” laughed Rob, “you know we can’t afford presents AND food!” He went to the door and opened it, and started in fear. Karl Snooge was stood on his doorstep.

“Alright, prick?” sneered Karl. Rob’s heart sank. He had been really looking forward to a nice Christmas.

“Mr Snooge, what are you doing here?”

“Why weren’t you at work this morning?” Rob was close to tears.

“Sir, this is really not ok,” he pleaded. “We already go through the charade every year of me having to convince you to give me the day off, and you pretending you don’t know that’s a thing. You can’t now show up on my doorstep and start acting like it never happened. My son is dying of emphysema, for God’s sake!”

“I? I, Karl Snooge, gave you the day off? Would I do a thing like that?” Behind Rob, Tiny Tom started having a coughing fit. Rob gestured at him, sobbing.

“Please let me go to my son!” he begged.

“You’re sacked!” Karl crowed gleefully. “I’m going to sack you and then I’m going to kill your family!” Rob sank to his knees, his body wracked with sobs.

“Please sir…” he whimpered.

“And then I’m going to raise your salary!” Karl grinned. Rob looked up at him, eyes red with tears.

“What?” he said.

“Yes, Rob. Raise your salary. And pay the mortgage on this house!” Rob looked behind him – his wife was rubbing Tiny Tom’s back. The child’s coughs were subsiding. He looked back at Karl. What the fuck was going on?

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m nice now!” Karl exclaimed gleefully. “I was just pretending to be horrible, as a joke! But actually, I’m nice!”

“You said you were going to kill my family.”

“That was part of the joke!” Karl giggled, before extending his finger. “Pull my finger!” he said. Rob fearfully pulled Karl’s finger and as he did so, Karl farted. They stared at each other for some time.

“Mr Snooge, it’s not funny to say you’re going to kill my family.”

“I’ve had a change of heart. You really did invoke the spirits last night, because it wasn’t just my old business partner, it was all the fucking ghosts. There was a weird little dead girl and then this jolly fat fuck and then this tall wraith guy. They showed me all these different Christmases – first they showed me my past, and you were right, my life has been incredibly Christmas-centric, it’s mad I act like I barely know anything about it. Then they showed me your sad sick son, and they sang this fucking awesome song, and then they showed me the future, and it turns out I even die at Christmas!” Rob nodded slowly, trying to follow all this.

“Ok,” he said.

“So I thought I’d be nice from now on. But I couldn’t resist the chance to do a little joke!”

“Do you not think it was kind of pushing your luck to do that?” asked Rob. “Like, you’re known for being an absolute prick, it’s kind of taking the piss to have a change of heart and then immediately start trolling people by telling them you’re going to kill their family?”

“I regret that bit,” said Karl, “I got carried away with that bit. But look!” he gestured further down the street, where the entire population of London was waiting with baited breath. “I invited everyone round yours! And I bought you this turkey!” A little orphan boy peeped out from behind Karl carrying the biggest turkey Rob had ever seen.

“What do you want me to do with that?” asked Rob. Karl shrugged.

“Cook it for the townsfolk?” he suggested.

“That will take hours,” said Rob. “What do you want me to do with all these people while it’s roasting?”

“I dunno. Don’t you have some games or something?” asked Karl. The townsfolk began pushing past him to get into the Scratchit family home.

“It’s cold out here, let us in!” one of them shouted. The house was soon rammed full of people. Tiny Tom stared around him, eyes wild with panic. He began to cough again.

“Rob, what the fuck is going on?” said Mrs Scratchit, trying desperately to shield Tiny Tom from the crushing mass.

“I’m reformed!” beamed Karl in reply. “I used to be horrible, but I’m nice now!”

“He’s having a manic episode,” Rob explained.

“This is hell!” Mrs Scratchit screamed at Karl. “This is one of the worst things you’ve done yet!” Karl raised a glass.

“God bless us, everyone!” he said, and winked at an imaginary camera. He was then trampled underfoot by the mob of Christmas revellers and died. The mob immediately lost interest in the Scratchit family and swarmed into Karl’s house to steal all his stuff so they could sell it to a massive spider in a back alley.

A Quick Plug – Alas, I will be plugging my tour for the foreseeable future, so please forgive me for squeezing it into every newsletter where I can. In January the show is coming to Leeds, Oxford and Norwich and the shows are selling nicely, but if you know anyone near those places who might enjoy my stuff, I’d love you to let them know! More info and ticket links for the whole tour are here – if it’s coming to a town near you, then do book a ticket and come say hi, I’d love to meet some lovely audiences all around the UK!

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – The good folks at the Pleasance have just announced the full lineup for their 2026 Work-in-Progress season, and as usual there’s a load of amazing stuff! Of course, I’d like to draw your attention to the first WIP version of Joz Norris Is Hugh Jackman Is The Phantom Of The Opera, which is shaping up to be a preposterous load of bollocks, but also to WIPs of two shows I’m working on as director – solo debuts from the amazing Anna Leong Brophy and Emmeline Downie. Already loving working on them both, and am excited to see them develop and grow!

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – Rewatched Muppet Treasure Island this week (my stepdad is the voice of one of the big stone heads that goes “Boom shakalaka” and I cannot overstate how much cachet this had in the playground in the 90s). I had forgotten the scene where the pirates torture Gonzo but it doesn’t work because he likes it, and my God that’s a funny thing to put in a kids’ movie.

Book Of The Week – I’m reading Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. I don’t often read stuff that is unabashedly commercial like this and my inner snob raised its hackles when I started it and thought “Oh no, this is going to be shit.” But, speaking as the guy who had the time of his life watching Now You See Me 3 the other week, I have to remember that I actually really love commercial stuff. This is a real page-turner and I’m into it and I’m having fun.

Album Of The Week – The Last Ship: Expanded Edition by Sting. Fans of Sting will know that twelve years ago he released an album about the decline of the Newcastle shipbuilding industry, which later became a Broadway musical. That musical is coming back, co-starring Shaggy, and Sting has released an updated, expanded version of the original album to mark the occasion. Sadly Shaggy is absent from the album, so we’ll just have to go and see the show in Amsterdam if we want to hear his take on these folk ballads about working in a shipyard.

Film Of The Week – Blue Moon. In which Ethan Hawke plays notoriously short songwriter Lorenz Hart. The film either employs digital trickery to make Hawke look short, or makes him stand in a hole in the ground to achieve the effect in-camera. “Why cast him then?” you may wonder. I certainly did. “Why not just cast a short guy?” Well, this film lays all those questions to rest, because my God it’s an incredible performance. If I were Richard Linklater I’d fill my set with as many holes as humanly possible to make sure I got this performance in the can.

That’s all for this week! As ever, if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it. Take care of yourselves until next time,

Joz xx

PS If you enjoy my newsletter and ever wanted to send me a donation on Ko-Fi, it’s hugely appreciated and helps me continue writing and making stuff!

PPS More Muppet Christmas Carol-related stuff if that’s your thing:

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