Meat Raffle(2025)

Student “Jackson” (Will Latimer) isn’t a great fan of the real ale in Carlisle’s “Druid’s Arms” and when he walks in to meet his dad (Michael Hodgson) sporting a new hairdo, his old man begins to wonder... Thing is, when the young butcher (Dominic Weatherill) arrives in the boozer with the turkey that is to be the raffle prize for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner, it transpires that nobody here is quite what first impressions might have suggested. Indeed, “Santa Claus” might actually be the only one in the room without a secret. The chain-smoking Hodgson is on good form, albeit briefly, and nothing plays out as the first few minutes hint at over the next, quite entertaining, quarter of an hour when a conclusion does rather put things into a proper seasonal perspective. Short but sweet, and not a cranberry in sight.