Exactly two years after the death of her benefactor Daddy Jack Wooley, a miserable, mean-spirited old cow named Hazel McScrooge is working in her office. She loves money, but hates almost everything else, including (but not limited to):
- Happiness
- Fun
- Love
- Freedom
- Family
- the Human Race in general
- Poor people in particular
- Acts of generosity
- Village shops
- Calendars
- Girls
- ‘Calendar Girls’
- Christmas, and
- Puppies
One particularly frigid Christmas Eve, Peggy reluctantly phones to invite Hazel over to Christmas dinner the next day; Hazel yells a tirade of abuse at her and frostily refuses the invitation (rather to Peggy’s relief). When Alan then inadvisibly appears at her door collecting for the poor of the parish, Hazel punches him hard in the face, spitting out an angry “Bah! Humbug!” in reply to the vicar’s blood-spattered “Merry Christmas!” farewell . She stomps off to bed in her expensive-but-tacky ‘Footballer’s Wives’ style boudoir, grumbling about the fact that her lackey Eddie Grundy gets a whole day off for the holiday.
That night, Hazel receives a chilling visitation from Daddy’s ghost. A haggard & palid looking Jack with a face like a bad lobster in a dark cellar warns her that “the dead who led bad lives are forced to roam around and not be at peace”. McScrooge tells him – with respect – to F*** off. The ghost of Jack ignores her, claiming that three other spirits are going to appear to Hazel, and warns her to change her mean and wicked ways before it’s too late. Ms McScrooge curtly tells him she’ll check with her accountant to investigate whether such a drastic lifestyle change would be a sound economic investment. As Jack leaves, his melancholy ghost calls out for Captain as his shade fades wispily into the ether.
Hazel dismisses all of this as a hallucination caused by a bad pint of Shires and she collapses into a deep sleep… but sure enough she soon gets a visit from the Ghost of Pullen Past, a strange and ancient phantom with a brightly glowing head and a disturbing propensity to hang around outside the village’s only public convenience. The wizened old Spirit of Bob takes her on a tour of her childhood and Scrooge McHazel quickly develops a warm and fuzzy feeling of pride when she remembers herself as a spoilt, entitled brat whose bad attitude has ruined Christmas for all and sundry down the ages. The review of Hazel’s past also features scenes from her young adulthood, when she discovers her Slitheen side; Slitheen don’t do Christmas.
Hazel, deeply moved by the vision, sheds tears of sheer pride before the phantom Bob Pullen returns her to her bed in dispair. (And because – frankly – his prostate is giving him real gyp).
Now it’s time for the Scruff of Christmas Present, a supernaturally erudite dog who sips martinis and wears fluffy antlers and a Christmas-themed doggie jumper. The mutt’s sophisticated air is spoiled only by the unsettling absence of one of it’s hind legs and approximately half of it’s pelvis. The phantom canine flies Hazel McScrooge on a whistle-stop tour around Ambridge to demonstrate how pretty much every other human is making the most of the season by getting together with friends and family.
The flyby includes a look in at Peggy’s house, where Tony is boring for Britain about his MG, Tom is droning on about the provenance of the organic Pigs in Blankets, Pat has (sensibly) passed out on Lambrini, Jonny is wrestling with Bill & Ben to stop them clawing his eyes out and Rob is glaring at Helen to prevent her from uttering a single squeak. Scrooge also gets to visit Grundy’s Field, where the dirt-poor family have been rehoused underneath Bartleby. Clarrie lovingly prepares a miniature Christmas feast by plucking all 48 remaining turkeys (to be served raw) and a meagre handful of Bert’s Brussel sprouts (also raw). The youngest son is Tiny Ed, a simple, sickly, courageous boy who couldn’t hang onto a herd of cows if his life depended upon it. As Christmas Day turns into Christmas Night, the canine spirit gets noticably more poorly, his hind-quarters obviously starting to decay badly. As Hazel complains about the dreadful smell of botulism, she turns to notice a sinister dark, hooded figure coming toward her.
It is the third phantom — the Ghost of Pip’s Future Career. Having passed up on the opportunity of a lifetime at Webster International Agribusiness Thing to return un-needed to a non-existent job at Brookers, the spectre of Pip’s future life is a pretty dour spirit, and she carts Ms McScrooge off to witness the future village she helped to create. Spoiler alert: Ambridge-Yet-To-Come is a pretty grim place; Sean O’Conner is still the editor, for starters. and all the Ambridge residents still sound exactly the same as one another. In other news, Tiny Ed is dead, the Grundys are more bankrupt than bankrupt after been presented with the bill for staying in a five star hotel for eight months (inclusive of ferret damage), the “Justin Elliot Megaplex and Heliport” is competing for building space on the Village Green with the “Hazel McScrooge Hypermart”, and Hazel herself is dead with no one to mourn her — just teenage rural delinquents Ben, Lily & Freddie remain to tag her gravestone with obscene grafitti of rutting sheep. After seeing her grave and realising that her secret ungodly experiments to acheive immortality have obviously failed, Hazel completely freaks out and promises to reform her miserly ways…
… and so it is that she wakes up in her own bed on Christmas Day. She sends a Godzilla-sized Fairbrethern goose to the Grundys (mostly because she knows it’ll really piss Eddie off), goes off to Peggy’s party after all where – to the stifled surprise of the other guests – she charitably kills Rob in hand-to-hand mortal combat, and gives a honkingly large donation to Alan’s dubious charity scheme. Hazel completely changes her attitude and lives the rest of her life with generosity, good cheer, warmth and compassion toward the worse off. As the years go by, she holds true to her word and honors Christmas with all her heart, treating Tiny Ed as if he were her own child, providing a near-constant stream of new cows for him to mismanage and lose.
“God bless us, every one!”