Please Just Take This Video From My Hands

Christmas is that time of the year when people you haven't heard from ages get in touch to share their trials and tribulations. HMV remind us they have a very good selection of choirs and Welsh songbirds warbling Ave Maria taking the space of new talent; Cliff Richard launches his annual ghosts of Christmas Past; the leftover advocaat reminds you that it will be there next year now that Aunt Flo has used her Bingo wings to visit the Mecca in the sky; soap operas plan weddings that can't possibly go wrong and BBC News 24 sets up camp in Oxford Street to bring us the real news in between footage of floods and war.

Now we have previously unseen film of Madeleine McCann released to an eager but wary media, in a drip-drip approach favoured by the estate of Eva Cassidy.

• Kate and Gerry McCann.......................... have released a new video featuring previously unseen footage of the little girl playing happily with her family before her disappearance.

I know it's a bit iffy having a dig when there is a missing child and Madeleine is not responsible for the media behemoth this story became. Nor is she a willing victim of some of the vitriol bestowed on her parents. However, So what's this latest development all about?

• In the first recording of her speaking that has been made public, she encourages her brother and sister to copy her gestures, saying: "Clap your hands together and one, two, three."

The soundtrack even uses Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars. The McCanns themselves have decided to take a back seat on this one and let the music, er the video do the talking. As Clarence the Friendly points out,

• "Kate and Gerry do not wish to say anything further. They feel the video will speak for itself. This message is entirely focused on Madeleine, as it should be at this time of year.

Well, that's clear then. The trouble is I always hear the accompanying song's lyrics as ' If I lie here, if I just lie here, would you lie with me, and just forget the world?'