I was so thrilled to see that it’s been confirmed that The Royle Family will be back for a Christmas special on BBC this year. It’s one of my all time favourite shows and there are many reasons why I love it, but I think the main one is that there’s someone we all know in that living room isn’t there? At least one someone.

I can’t name names because it would cause pandemonium but I know someone who’s just like Jim, someone who I swear Caroline Aherne based Barbara on and our Anthony is in fact someone in my immediate family, I’m sure of it! Quite literally, there’s some aspect of someone I know in every one of the characters, which I suspect is something that everybody finds and is one of the reasons this show has been so successful.

The last Royle Family Christmas special, The Queen of Sheba, was one of the best Christmas specials ever. It had everything from enormously funny scenes to enormously sad scenes. I still can’t watch the sad parts; I make strategic use of the skip function on the DVD player to avoid the bit where Nana tells Barbara she loves her and most importantly, the part where Nana dies. I just can’t watch it.

I do however watch Jim’s kitchen rant about his batteries being stolen by “The Queen of bloody Sheba!” for her hand-held fan and poor Dave being shunted to and fro to the living room to relay messages between Barbara and Jim because they aren’t speaking to each other.

Here’s a clip of Jim’s rant preceded by the poor Derek-babes being battered by Denise’s extensions and a post-rant meeting with Nana…

Nana has always been my favourite because her character has personality traits of several of the people I love the most all rolled into one. She’s a bit of my late Mum and Granny and several of the elderly ladies I used to work with at a nursing home, and I’ll miss her this year! Here are a couple of my favourite Nana scenes…

This one is where Nana accidentally farts…

And this one is where Dave’s reading to Nana…

I hope that in this year’s special, Twiggy and Cheryl get it together. They’d be a great couple wouldn’t they?

The entire concept of The Royle Family must have been an audacious one when Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash first presented it as an idea. Other than the concept of Big Brother – ‘people watching’ televised – who’d have thought that a show which is based pretty much entirely in one room about a family who chain smoke and watch a very lot of telly would have worked?

With writers less talented, it probably wouldn’t have done, but their partnership – along with that of the other co-writers, Henry Normal and Carmel Morgan – is obviously one that has that most elusive and prized ingredients of ‘chemistry’.

The casting was fantastic too with all the characters being played to utterly believable perfection. Even the supporting cast was brilliant; characters such as Emma, Darren, Twiggy, Mary and Joe… they’re all wonderful.

I’m desperate to see what the family are up to now; little baby Norma won’t be so little now and baby David must be getting near his teenage years. And I wonder what Anthony’s up to and if he’s an even bigger exec than he was in Queen of Sheba?

I hope though that there aren’t going to be any hideously upsetting bits in it this year! Just plain old comedy through and through would suit me nicely!

So here are some of my favourite bits from The Royle Family – enjoy!