00:00Oh dear, oh!
00:02Oh, that was close...
00:04Ho, ho, ho!
00:05At last, this is my floor!
00:07Ho, ho, dear, Merry Christmas, dear boy!
00:10Merry Christmas!
00:11Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!
00:15Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!
00:16Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!
00:17Oh, yeah, yes!
00:19Ho, ho, ho, ho!
00:23Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!
00:27Ho, ho, ho-ho, ho!
00:28Ho, ho, ho, ho!
00:30This is cool, this is cool.
00:33This is cool.
00:33Here we go.
00:35Here we go.
00:38There we go.
00:40Here we go.
00:42Here we go.
00:44It's still quite high.
00:46Roman Heath reads photoshoots
00:47and story times in an audience.
00:49Yeah!
00:51But we get asked in the grottoes,
00:5493% of people
00:56because we were asked whether
00:57people, children come in and ask
00:59for a present straight away.
01:01This is the 28th year
01:02of Santa School where
01:04we get together with a group
01:07of Father Christmas performers who
01:09work in various
01:11leisure parks, department stores,
01:14shows,
01:15shopping centres etc.
01:16on those very rare occasions when
01:19the real Father Christmas can't be there himself.
01:21So what we do is get together to
01:23share knowledge, share experiences
01:25from previous years grottoes
01:28and just learn from each other.
01:37So what we do is we get our pallet
01:39if you're left hand, if you're left hand,
01:41right hand if you're left hand and vice versa.
01:44We go from the fingertips down to the palm twice.
01:47So all together it's
01:50Merry Christmas!
01:55It's fine to be inquisitive and interesting
01:57but you're interested in what it is.
02:00So we'll go through some of them
02:01of the more popular ones.
02:02I think what it's doing
02:04is making live events
02:06and live appearances more
02:08of the more popular ones.
02:10Remind me!
02:12What did you write in this?
02:14Civil Brist, which is marked.
02:18Yes!
02:19Now this is really important
02:20that
02:22Santo is the first celebrity.
02:24In order to
02:26deliver an encounter that is magical
02:28you have to take it seriously
02:30and you have to really care
02:32about the encounter that you have
02:34with a child and about the content.
02:36It's a duty we have really
02:38it's an obligation we have
02:40and it's a privilege to be able to
02:42represent Father Christmas
02:44who is someone so special to children.
02:58Father!
03:00Good handwriting though.
03:01That's nice.
03:03Oh yes.
03:05Something in that one.
03:06Father Christmas.
03:09Ooh!
03:10I'd better check the emails too.
03:12I think the hardest thing
03:13it's probably the awkward questions
03:15it is the heartbreaking,
03:17the heart-wrenching questions.
03:19There's a lot of uncertainty in the world
03:20and you'll be surprised.
03:22I always say kids are like sponges.
03:24They take a lot in and they
03:27talk about it in different ways
03:28and they release that pressure
03:30and that's dressed in different ways.
03:31And I do find often it's at Christmas time
03:34and I have had conversations
03:36with children before where
03:37they've told me heartbreaking stories
03:39and it's so normal for them.
03:42So that is quite hard.
03:43I think I wish I could just fix everything
03:47but unfortunately that's not my role here.
03:48My role here is to hopefully bring
03:50a little bit of magic to help put a plaster on it,
03:52shall we say.
03:53Um, 18% up the chimney.
03:55That's the one favourite in my household.
03:58It goes up the chimney and magically appears.
04:01Yeah, that's um, that's the best.
04:03Whiskey, Darren.
04:04Cheese and biscuits.
04:05I'm assuming.
04:06No cheese and biscuits.
04:07No cheese and biscuits.
04:08No cheese and biscuits.
04:09Very kind and you recognise them, etc.
04:11But also, you're Santa.
04:14So it's a weird and…
04:15queued for two hours or driven, you know, and got very excited because they're seeing you on a Sunday morning.
04:21If you flip it and imagine that you've waited two hours to meet Johnny.
04:38But the idea is that they will tell you the trends, they will tell you what they're interested in,
04:43no matter what age it is.
04:45And if you do enough research, it's so easy to research things these days.
04:50I mean, you don't have to go to a library anymore with a library card and take out a book.
04:54Everything just happens and you can find out.
04:56So the lovely thing about it is it's almost instant.
05:00You can get an inkling as to what they're talking about very, very quickly.
05:05So, yeah, the key things are knowing their name and age,
05:09knowing something that happens to them in the year matters hugely.
05:13And actually the biggest reward and pain of the year.
05:18You just think it's a dead end you don't need to go in our future.
05:34How often does anyone get in their lives to get the opportunity to be a mythical individual,
05:41a being for whom the response is always a smile.
05:45And that sounds as though it's a cliche or some kind of show business anecdote,
05:52but it's genuinely true.
05:53Everybody looks at Santa and goes,
05:55it doesn't matter how old or how young they are.
05:58And it really is a serious business to do well.
06:02And, my God, you do it really well.
06:04So, thank you later on this afternoon after a minute's time.
06:10But...
06:11Honestly, we don't want to promise anything.
06:14We don't want to promise anything.
06:16But we cannot promise anything.
06:19As much as we'd love to, we can't promise anything.
06:22So we'll see or I'll see what I can do.
06:24There's always the Santa inside of you.
06:28You listen to your best self.
06:30You also listen to the child that's in front of you.
06:33How do you reflect that child?
06:35Some children are boisterous, some are shy.
06:38For some, it's their first time.
06:39For others, they're old hands at this sort of thing.
06:42Let's whizz through.
06:44So we'll come back to this in more detail later.
06:46But I'm going to whizz through some findings from you guys from...
06:52The vast majority, two thirds, were in grottos.
06:55And the rest at various different...
06:57...
