ONE of my young colleagues was tasked this week with going out into the streets and asking people what was the worst Christmas present they have ever been given.

It's an age old tradition on newspapers that when you want someone to do what in journalistic parlance is called a vox pop (which is short for vox populi in Latin or the voice of the people in translation) the youngest junior reporter is always picked on.

It's a kind of rite of passage and a good training ground for receiving the sort of rebuffs they will get in later working life.

The sort of questions you are instructed to ask depends on which senior person (the one who is sitting comfortably at their desk in a warm office nursing a cup of coffee) hands out the instructions and chooses the subject.

So one week it may be 'does your husband's snoring drive you crazy?' the next week it may be 'do you think the government's policy on the Euro is tantamount to giving away Britain's national identity?' In other words, it's pot luck.

Scottie

I can well remember as a callow 18-year-old trainee being dispatched into a rainy September afternoon to enquire of a less than interested public 'do you think dogs should wear coats?'.

I don't know why, perhaps the chief reporter had been bitten by a Scottie wearing a tartan jacket on the way to work.

I soon learned that people had plenty to say, but not necessarily about the subject you asked them about and even if they did say anything wouldn't give their names and addresses.

Desperate

I finally found one woman with a dachshund which was wearing a blue tube but she said it was because the little animal's teats kept brushing the ground rather than a fashion item. I hardly thought that was suitable to report and returned to the office desperate to seek advice.

This came from one of seniors who looked around carefully before hissing 'make it up'. 'What do you mean?' I said.

'Look', he said patiently, 'if you don't want to walk around in the rain for hours asking bloody silly questions, just make a few good quotes up and names to go with them and then pop into the vets and ask them what they think, then ask someone in a wool shop if they have a pattern for a little doggie outfit and there you have it.'

Did I take the advice? I'm not telling, and nowadays we take pictures with the vox pop interviews so cheating is not on unless you have a stock of fake pictures on hand to go with each quote or the nerve to try to pretend that the man saying he thinks bald men are sexy is really Mr B Tomlinson of Pensilva and not Bruce Willis.

Gifts

But back to Christmas gifts. When we were deciding on this week's question I was toying with the idea of whether we should ask people what they thought of the Turner prize being awarded to a picture by a German depicting a man urinating on a chair but decided it was too complicated and anyway this is a family paper and we try to avoid bodily functions except in this column.

So Christmas gifts it was, and we all added our own worst gifts to the list. Someone pointed out that it was a little mean really to mention the subject at all because it is 'the thought that counts'.

Quite frankly it has been my experience that people who say 'it's the thought that counts' are the people who buy you bright mauve bath salts that take the enamel off your bath or small round china pomadors which smell like something has died inside them.

There are several reasons why people buy dreadful presents.

Theory

Firstly, meanness. A former colleague was once given a gift wrapped Harrods carrier bag, with nothing in it.

I've heard of people who save previous year's presents to redistribute, fine in theory but do remember to take the tag which reads 'to dear Monica lots of love from Great Aunt Hilda, Christmas 1978'. Some people horde free gifts and hand them on - such as a CD of favourite Christmas songs (none of which you have ever heard of) with a tiny unnoticed label which reads 'presented free with the Sunday People'.

I was once given a set of fish knives and forks which still had two pieces of confetti adhering to the underside of the box.

Secondly, panic buying. Husbands are particularly prone to this and a friend who once did a Christmas stint on a department store perfume counter said the sales girls loved the out of breath male who rushed into the store on Christmas Eve and said his wife liked a perfume 'in a bottle with a blue label' and could then be persuaded to part with a large amount of cash on one of the less than popular lines.

Such husbands will almost certainly be unable to prevent themselves from mentioning the price of the said perfume sometime over the festive period and at varying intervals throughout the ensuing year. The other favourite is underwear, and the only time a male will venture into the forbidden territory of the lingerie department even if he does come out with something too small, usually red or black, and almost certainly bearing a small decorative fringe of fur.

Thirdly, drink fuelled panic buying leading to the purchase of large items - ie big teddies or other hideous soft toys or giant boxes of chocolates from totally unknown manufacturers with chocolate that tastes like brown lard.

Or whole Stilton cheeses with a tiny bottle of port so that you know they've fallen into the supermarket two minutes before the store closes and the giant Toblerone had sold out.

Hideous

And finally (although I could go on) gifts from people who don't really like you all that much. On successive years my mother-in-law bought me an apron, an oven glove, a pair of men's slippers and an ironing board cover.

A friend says hers always bought her sweaters which were two sizes too small and then took great pleasure in asking if she had put on weight. And then there's another friend's sister-in-law who kindly handed over a Wonderbra, well knowing my friend was just a teeny bit sensitive about her lacking curves.

An innocent mistake? I don't think so.

The naffest gifts are, to my mind, Christmas Christmas gifts. Anything with festive scenes which can only be used over a very short period. If you really want to annoy people you must buy them an expensive sweater decorated with a jolly Santa, full reindeer complement and snowy fir trees.

They'll have to take it off on Boxing Day and put it away for 12 months.