The Nation's Favourite Christmas Food (BBC2)

AS a nation, we consume 100 million turkeys between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. And if all the mince pies we eat were placed end to end, they'd be three times the length of the Great Wall of China.

The BBC's celebration of festive food was a feast of facts, a veritable blow-out of information about a time of the year that is "the epitome of greediness".

Even the producers couldn't resist adding more than was needed to the recipe. Instead of a top ten of favourite foods, we had a top 11, possibly as a sop to vegetarian viewers as the bottom slot was occupied by nut roast.

The chefs were not impressed. "Artificial sausage made out of dry rot," suggested Clarissa Dickson Wright. But there were murmurs of approval for roast goose, at number ten. "The finest Christmas fowl" said Keith Floyd, calling the choice between goose and turkey like selecting between a Bentley Turbo and a Ford Fiesta.

The only cautionary note was struck by Richard E Grant as narrator, who revealed that there's more fat in roast goose than three packs of lard.

And so it went on. The results of the national survey were revealed, while celebrity chefs and ordinary people offered recipes for Christmas dishes.

Smoked salmon was at number eight. Northerners, it appeared, don't much like it, with only three per rating it as a Christmas favourite.

Trifle - number three overall - topped the poll north of the border. Again, opinion was divided. It must be sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, insisted one chef. But Antony Worrall Thompson complained they got stuck in your teeth.

There's also the question of how much rum or sherry to put in the trifle. "Not too strong in case the children get drunk, and we don't want that," said one parent. We certainly don't - getting sloshed is the job of the adults.

Meat-eating Asians' number one at Christmas is chicken. It was at five in the national list, but even that high placing shocked some chefs.

Christmas pudding made second place. People like the mix of fruit, spices and booze. Sometimes you wonder if the festive season isn't an exercise to see how many dishes containing alcohol can be served. But the idea of a slice of Christmas pudding fried in leftover goose fat didn't much appeal.

As for the favourite food, no prizes for guessing turkey and trimmings was the winner.

The turkey came over from the US in the 1500s "and has been causing outbreaks of salmonella ever since". The birds would never had made the trip if they'd known we'd eat them.

As for the accompanying sprouts, Gordon Ramsay noted they had the same effect over Christmas as baked beans did the rest of the year. Did you know that over Christmas, we produce enough gas to fill 98 hot air balloons?