It’s the first day of December and what does that mean? That’s right, an acceleration of the mouth-frothing festive pandemonium that makes the dog-eat-dog frenzy of Christmas shopping resemble

the opening 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

“Christmas has become too commercial,” the diarist muttered to his colleague. “I don’t know, my son is doing a reading today,” he replied. “Ah yes, from the bible?”

I responded with a warming smile of optimism “No, the Argos catalogue,” he sighed.

There hasn’t been much goodwill to all men in the world of football of late. Unless you’ve been living in a bathysphere for the past few days, you’ll know that the second leg of the Copa Libertadores final between old foes River Plate and Boca Juniors was postponed after

a quite fearsome sequence of rampaging hostilities.

The unsavoury incidents in the Argentine got the diarist thinking of other footballing postponements. And no, we’re not talking of Rangers’ ‘Wattenaccio’ system in 2008 when the Ibrox men managed to postpone all forms of attractive football for an entire UEFA Cup campaign.

In Peru in 1921, a match between Sport Huascar and Saenz Penahad was delayed for a day in order to clear pig faeces from the pitch after the marauding swines had ran amok. “The players stank to high heaven thanks to all that s***,” said the Huascar boss. Suffering Falkirk fans often express similar views these days.

The s*** has certainly hit the fan for Ballybrack FC, meanwhile, after they found themselves under investigation for faking the death of a player in order to avoid playing a match recently.

Fernando Nuno La-Fuente was reported to have died in a car crash but, well, reports of his demise were exaggerated.

“I’m finding it a little bit funny because, basically, I’m not dead,” he said upon his return to Ireland after a trip home to his native Spain.

Given that Ballybrack are second in their league, the diarist can’t even accuse them of playing like stiffs.

*A new calendar is much a part of Christmas as dry turkey, a dismal episode of Eastenders and abdominal bloat.

Aston Villa fan, Kevin Beresford, has unveiled his own calendar celebrating the life and works of Alan Hutton. The retired printer, 66, has selected 12 images of the Scot in “stunning, gritty shots.”

Meanwhile, Hutton’s former club, Rangers, are set to unveil their own pictorial chart of the year with each month documenting the various charges the SFA hit them with.

*Orange-bonced poacher Simon Murray seems to be settling in to life in South Africa.

The ex-Dundee United and Hibs man signed a one-year deal with the Bidvest Wits, which sounds like a cheeky, nod-and-a-wink rhyming slang for a Dolly Parton album.

Johannesburg has a reputation for its crime rate but Murray is unperturbed.

“I’ve not seen any trouble,” he said. “If you go looking for it, you’ll find it, just like you would if you were kicking about in Dundee.”

Fair enough. And what about the wildlife? “I came off the plane wondering if there would be giraffes wandering about,” he added. No, you have to go to Club Tropicana in Dundee on a Saturday night to see that.

*Forty eight hours, 12 games, over 630 moves? No, it’s not the Tennent’s Sixes but the World Chess Championship, which eventually drew to a close this week in London.

After a dozen classic games each ended in a draw, the stalemate between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana was the first time in the event’s 132-year history that no decisive results were managed.

The title was decided in a series of quick-fire tie-breakers known in the chess world as Armageddon. Here in the world of newspapers, meanwhile, Armageddon means just one thing at this time of year. That’s right, the office Christmas knees-up.

*It’s slow going. Snooker supremo, Barry Hearn, was enraged the other day when a first-round match in the UK Championship between Rod Lawler (pictured) and Anthony Hamilton took more than four hours to complete six frames. Goodness knows how many pints the drouthy

Bill Werbeniuk would’ve downed in that time? The Canadian once polished off 43 lagers in a match before declaring: “I’m away to the bar for a proper drink now.”

On this December date back in 1973, Jack Nicklaus became the first golfer to reach $2m in career earnings with a one-shot victory in the Walt Disney World Open at the Florida resort.

Last weekend, meanwhile, Phil Mickelson pocketed $9m in his contrived, smile-for-the-cameras, shoot-out with Tiger Woods.

It wasn’t at Walt Disney World but plenty still thought it was all very Mickey Mouse.