EYE has spent the past few days watching the great entries to our Christmas video competition and we decided we needed a professional entertainment judge.

Simon Cowell was unavailable but we have gone one better and put the judging decision in the hands of past NAEA president Trevor Kent.

He outlines his thoughts and decision below. The judge’s decision is final – we certainly don’t want to argue with him.

On the first day of Advent little did I expect to open my virtual calendar and find an email from Nick Salmon [M.D. of EYE], not inviting me to watch yet another video of 1930s Austin Sevens, but subjecting me to a collection of Christmas Videos, so kindly submitted by clearly some very bored estate agents and suppliers – and asking me to judge their merits.

“Find a winner,” he said. “There’s a prize (for them, not you) to be awarded for the best!”

Now those who know me will recognise at once that IT is totally beyond me, so I’ve no idea how any of them were made, although the strange phrase ‘Giff Gaff’ did seem to appear now and then, and I understand that these modern phones (which seem to have dispensed with cords these days) also actually record moving pictures.

Working from the left on EYE’s list of nine video entries we find Estates IT – a musical extravaganza with, one assumes, their staff’s heads superimposed on little dancing twits, jolly nice, but was a little worried by reference to suicide!

On to RedDoor Homes‘ ‘Cheesy Christmas Cracker’, a mammoth in-house production where Seany Christmas gave us Elf Action, bearded promiscuity, and a good word for solicitors (marked down there by Big T) and culminating in a Road Traffic Act Violation of momentous proportions.

Thankfully moved on to VTUK’s visual ditty, where seven overgrown dwarfs rap away whilst wrapped in hideous sweaters, one clearly too heavy for its owner. It was when they began to fly the Red Flag that my interest perked up, as political comment is very much my bag of Farage.

Next came Hill and Clark, my best Christmas present yet, a short as they say in the film business (but not very sweet). Do you remember those chains of postcards of local views concertinaed together with an advert at the end? This was the video version.

The Apartment Company was similar but upmarket in that Bath was plugged as we were drip-fed views of their patch in all its glory, very Yule travelLog. But the ‘Bath on Ice’ reference made me shudder.

Lennard and Hill were next, Snowy the snowman having erected a board on his latest instruction, inspiring lyrics which would have warmed the hearts of the staff of Shelter. I QUITE liked this one.

Waterfords came in with an offering that made my mouth water – gingerbread man and woman, a short and sweet recipe and very on-message, in that they’ll sell your house whilst you focus on Christmas. However, where you’d find a removals firm, let alone a solicitor, available at this time of year I know not!

Davis & Sons lost me at the start as I hate the use of ‘Xmas’, however their pop-up book animation adding staff faces was mildly pleasurable and may well bring an instruction in, although the artwork reminded me of a snail – a reflection of the market in general I hope, not their performance!

Finally, thank God, I watched the festive offering from Newton Fallowell Hartley (can one get all that on a board?). Sorry, I’m so punch drunk I’ll have to go back and watch it again. Right, I’m back now – yes, bit confusing this one – suggesting that when Father Christmas had ‘been’, you might need more room for extra children. I can only hope that FC is one of the family already, and has only one call to make!

Right. Decision time (assuming you’re still with me, or indeed care).

In THIRD place comes Lennard & Hill’s Snowmen, featuring a board in the wind.

In SECOND place there can be little doubt that VTUK are totally PC with limited growth having made a great and inventive show.

But NUMBER ONE for me by a nose (Rudolph’s) has to be the creepy Seany Clause behind the RedDoor. Those claws I would not wish to see close to anyone near and dear to me at any time of year.

A super effort brilliantly made by staff who clearly feel safer with Sean than most others would. Well done to you all!

Happy Christmas from Big T, now in semi-obscurity due partly to age but mostly to 50-year-in-estate-agency BURN-OUT!