One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and ’doing a show.’

Burchill is wryly distancing herself from a particular middle-class British Christmas ritual: the pre-Christmas trip “up to town” (often meaning central London or a city centre) to see a West End/seasonal production—“doing a show.” By calling it a “build-up tradition,” she frames it as part of the social choreography that leads into Christmas, then punctures it with the blunt admission that it has “totally bypassed” her. The tone suggests both self-mockery and critique: she implies that festive expectations can feel like compulsory cultural consumption, and she positions herself as an outsider to that script, whether by taste, class sensibility, or deliberate contrarianism.