Last night saw the final Creative Social event of the year. And it was a corker. Five quick-fire talks on what various influential members of the creative community a) wanted for Christmas and b) wanted to give to the industry.

Not the most conventional, Ted-ish, I’m-here-to-save-the-world-with-origami kind of talk, but my vote went to Dave Bedwood from M&C.

Never has the phrase ‘you had to be there’ been more apt, but essentially what he wanted for Christmas was a Star Wars box set, a hard drive to put the films on, including any remaining copies of the films, and anyone’s memories of the films, a hammer, a gun with morphine-loaded bullets, an attractive woman from the 70’s (couldn’t remember her name, or the era for that matter, probably for the best, he’s married) who would soothe him in a coffin loaded with a DVD player on which he’d watch Earth’s last remaining copy of The Phantom Menace whilst dying of a drug overdose delivered via that gun, fired by Chewbacca, no less.

I’ve missed some steps, including his wish to then be buried under Basingstoke Tesco, where they incidentally shifted more copies of the Phantom Menace than any other establishment. I’m assuming the ceremony around his burial was part b of his response.

As Dave lay limp in his coffin, morphine worming through his veins, I sat there in admiration at what felt like a really tidy piece of writing.

As he worked through the slides, he was saying stuff like ‘yeah, I probably wasn’t thinking’. And seemed to give off an air of last minute preparedness. And I believe it. But if there’s one thing I want for Christmas myself, it’s to maintain the drive to be continuously prepared for moments like that, where you might only have an hour on a brief in an agency perhaps, or if you’re asked to play a jazz flute solo and you need to play it cool as you pull a piece of silver from your sleeve.

Every day is a Cup Final, and we’re all in training. All the time. Even if we think we’re not. So whilst I left the talk contemplating a dreamy death by morphine (that’s your fault Dave), I also left thinking that his may have been the most practical talk of all those delivered last night. Clever.