As Christmas descends, so glitzy retail campaigns appear.

John Lewis has even created itself a drama in the form of a £7million series of six episodes about a bear and a hare. 

It also booked ad space to preview it. It seems advertisers are now creating TV drama, which no doubt will be more popular than the programmes which it advertises around.

Could this be the future of TV drama? It's an interesting question for me and my fellow students on the Glasgow Caledonian University TV Fiction Writing course.

After several weeks of my landlord in Glasgow pacing the room learning his lines for an Alan Ayckbourn play called Season's Greetings, three little pigs and a wolf puppet appeared in the corner of the living room.

My landlady, fellow MA student Jan and I all went to see him perform in it at a city centre pub and arts venue called Stereo.We all really enjoyed it although it was hard at times not to wonder whether the play was performed at sea as every now and then there was a rush of water charging around the room via some huge down pipes.

Jan also discovered this week that she has had a sketch accepted for the Christmas extravaganza at Glad Café, another cafe/venue on the southside of Glasgow.

I had Christmas dinner with the girls from the course in the Merchant City and paid £23 for six ravioli - a whopping £4 each. To be fair, they were magnificent crab ravioli in lobster sauce and, iceberg-like, there was a bit more than just the rounded dome under the sauce thankfully. 

I sat next to Brenda the Earbenda and eventually we had to be moved to the soft furnishings near the door as her voice got louder and louder. It was pretty tame as Christmas nights out go, mind you.

It took me back in time to the end of my last postgraduate course, which was in retail executive management. The course ended at Christmas time and I had just, that week, got a job working as a buyer at Harrods. I was also dating a prominent young architect, who invited me to his Christmas office party.

I arrived at the party late and got stuck in at the bar, making up for lost time.

My architect was Sir Hugh Casson's protégé, but his star rating with Sir Hugh plummeted when his girlfriend was sick all over Sir Hugh's desk and on - or should I say in - his brown shag pile carpet.

I was turfed out and ditched instantly by my ambitious young architect. I found myself sitting on the steps outside Sir Hugh's office with some guy's hand down the front of my top in a firm grasp. 

To top it all off I was picked up by the police and banged up for the night courtesy of The Met. I ended up off work for three days and got a verbal warning.

Another epic Christmas night out in my back catalogue happened when I arranged a staff party for a team I had working for me in Manchester. 

I'd brought in the first European markets to the UK and had built up a huge one in Manchester, which included a German expandable beer tent. I booked the tent out for all 200 staff who'd worked on the Christmas campaigns and events.

In that expandable tent, there were other Bavarian drinks, not for sale to the public, and not of a 'proof' known to man nor beast. 

One memory, which is hard to erase was of a gay councillor under the city's giant Christmas tree getting up close and personal with one of my event managers. 

The expandable beer tent ended the night flat on the ground. Only two people made it in to work the next morning. I was one of them and I spent the morning at the police station explaining the night away.

This was because the Head of Highways, my assistant and the Head of Health and Safety were all in jail. They had no recollection of anything relating the previous night's activities.

So this year's post-grad Christmas do was tame in comparison to previous festive nights out I have known and after our meal and a few drinks, I was home for 9.30pm.

So here I am, back home for the holidays in my But 'n' Ben in the Highlands, hoping the Tardis-style generator out the back of our house will keep running, supplying power to the village, over the festive season. 

It has been out there for three weeks now and I have had to decamp to the living room to work, as the noise is like having a lorry parked in your garden with its engine running day and night. 

We still have an essay, an adaptation and a treatment (not a wax or a facial treatment but a TV fiction one) to do before the end of January.

Last week our guest speaker was Robert Love, ex-Head of Drama at STV and creator of Taggart. Our lecturer, an ex-comedy writer on shows such as Naked Video, was sitting beside Robert and the two of them gave their own very good live show. Just like The 'Odd Couple'...

This Christmas, I'll be thinking about my friend, Chrisella Ross, a colleague and friend I met through the annual goNORTH Festival in Inverness. Chrisella, who stayed a few nights at our Glasgow flat last week, received a ScreenHi scholarship to do the MA in TV Fiction at Glasgow Caledonian University in 2010/11.

She has gone on to write five episodes of a new Gaelic drama series called Bannan, meaning The Ties that Bind, which will air on BBC in autumn 2014. She is working with Skye-based Chris Young of Young Films, who produced the Inbetweeners, and with actor-director Tony Kearney of River City fame. 

I wish her well as she heads off to write another fifteen episodes! 

To Chrisella and everyone out there in the ether, Nollaig Chridheil agus Bliadhna Mhath Ùr!