There are many things it is inadvisable to confess on Twitter – murders, an admiration for Nick Clegg, that time you picked a carton of takeaway rice out of the bin while hungover – but today I discovered another. Do not, under any circumstances, confess to even vaguely liking Love Actually. Bad things will happen. 

I was spurred to mention the most saccharine of Richard Curtis confections by a press release sent by that other Twitter bête noire, John Lewis. I castigated the upmarket department store and purveyor of dog’s heads in decorative boxes for this line: “The crescendo moment in Love Actually when Emma Thompson receives a Joni Mitchell compilation album is every woman’s worst fear.” 

Poor old Joni Mitchell. See, Emma Thompson’s character is actually pretty fond of Joni, it’s the fact that she spotted her husband, Severus Snape, buying some expensive jewellery which did not make its way to her but ended up instead with his secretary. This being a Richard Curtis flick, Snape doesn’t actually diddle the devilish floozy by the franking machine but the damage is done anyway. 

No one had an issue with my unprompted plot point picking but then I went too far and confessed: “I quite like Love Actually. You may lose all respect for me now.” A stream of responses chiding me followed including Danni’s rather brilliant eight word review: “It’s like watching 90 minutes of Iceland ads.”

And there is lots to hate about it. There’s the bit where Egg off of This Life, before he went American and started nixing zombies, does a Bob Dylan and reels off his love for his best friend’s wife using sneakily written cue cards. Then there’s the syrupy opening monologue in which Hugh Grant references 9/11 to support the premise of a lightweight romantic comedy. In fact, there’s so many bits that are brain-achingly awful, I could use up this entire post listing them.  

But somehow I can overlook the awkward plot lines and the irritating bits. Bill Nighy is brilliant, Martine McCutcheon does some actual acting rather than simply hawking yoghurt and Hugh Grant is more fun as a charming Prime Minister than getting red-faced about red tops at the Levenson enquiry. 

Nothing truly terrible is allowed to happen in Richard Curtis land. That’s probably why I actually like Love Actually. It’s the most idealised Christmas imaginable. It snows but public transport still works and the Prime Minister knocking on doors in search of a woman he loves isn’t greeted with an outbreak of public disorder or a tabloid expose. 

Still, I realise that there’s little point in pleading the case for an 8-year-old rom/com. You either like it or you don’t. Instead, let me end with a piece of news that may unite us all in festive good cheer: a Christmas Pudding milkshake is now on sale. Surely that’s a Christmas development we can all get behind.