This splendid little series of comic shorts moves on to a semi-autobiographical gem written and directed by Johnny Vegas. Here, we meet the teen incarnation of Johnny, who, because of his girth, is asked to dress up as Santa at the church hall after his dad fails to fulfil ho-ho-ho-ing duties at a very grotty grotto.

The first episode of Little Crackers offered an object lesson in sharp storytelling. My First Brassiere was a pithy love letter to Barbara Windsor's bosom that offered the surreal sight of the older Babs being confronted with her own burgeoning teenage breasts - she played a shop assistant measuring up her younger self.

Weird, huh? Perky and engaging, with Samantha White striking as the young Babs and Sally Hawkins and Neil Jackson a joy as her parents, this short film played like a trailer for a feature-length story. Someone really should make it.

Next up was Jack Whitehall's bash at his Little Cracker, as Archie Lyndhurst starred as a 10-year-old version of the camp comedian, with Inbetweeners mum Belinda Stewart-Wilson in another 'MILF' role and Whitehall himself as a chap called Robin Hood.

Like Babs' offering, this was another enjoyable little comedy and although Whitehall's idea and execution were spot-on, it's obvious that it's Sky 1's Little Crackers concept that is to thank for the consistent high standard of these yuletide treats.

Sheridan Smith, Jane Horrocks, John Bishop and Johnny Vegas are among the stars appearing in a week-long series of short autobiographical comedies. The season opens with Barbara Windsor, who recalls an embarrassing teenage encounter with a wardrobe mistress and a subsequent trip to buy her first bra. Also tonight, Jack Whitehall's story tells of a flamboyant 10 year-old who liked to dress up.

How Barbara Windsor became a Little Cracker

The much-loved former Carry On and EastEnders star tells how she came to make a short film about the day she bought her first bra.

Barbara Windsor: I hated my breasts

Telly legend Barbara Windsor has told how she used to hate her famous boobs.

Little Crackers, the title of Sky's specially commissioned comedy shorts, is something of a hostage to fortune, underlining the fact that the snap doesn't work in all of them and the jokes are sometimes a bit duff. But Bill Bailey's "Car Park Babylon" was very satisfying. Bailey played a technologically obsessed loner who finds himself on the receiving end of supernatural punishment, after failing to show sufficient Christmas spirit. This is a fairly standard template for a Christmas tale, I suppose, but the pleasure here came from the agency of his comeuppance, which wasn't some chain-clanking ghoul but a malevolent car park pay station. Having taken his last remaining cash - to the accompaniment of comically extended whirrings and clonks - the machine began to communicate with him through a tiny speaker, talking in ways that suggested Bailey wasn't its first victim. The last shot you saw was the machine in bleak subterranean isolation, the tinny sound of Bailey singing a desperate Christmas carol leaking from its innards.

Tonight, David Baddiel's swotty teenage self locks horns with Guinness Book of Records editor Norris McWhirter (an uncannily authentic Alistair McGowan). Next, we meet an equally uncool 14-year-old Julia Davis. Fortified with Dutch courage filched from her parents' house, young Julia isn't going to let flat chest, braces and frizzy perm get in the way of her first kiss. Or is she?

The feast of comic shorts continues with Jo Brand and Bill Bailey's offerings. Brand whisks us back to 1972 - when she is a hormonal teenager in a strop because her parents have moved house and her beloved cat Fluff is missing. But it's when the fondue set comes out that things get really ugly. In Bailey's wonderfully zany film, he's a modern-day Scrooge who finds himself trapped in an underground car park when the technological world turns against him. Only through the voice in the pay-and-display machine will he find redemption.