Jingle bells, flashlight sells! I know Amazon is bad, but their Christmas advert had me sobbing

The advert, featuring a young ballerina whose show is cancelled because of the pandemic, packs an emotional punch. It nearly made me forgive Amazon, writes Jenny Eclair

French ballet dancer Taïs Vinolo stars in the Amazon Christmas advert (Amazon/YouTube)

Okay, we all know Amazon is bad. They don’t pay sufficient taxes, they’ve ruined the high street and they don’t treat their employees fairly. The other unforgivable thing they may have done, though, is steal this year’s Christmas telly ad crown. Surely that’s good old John Lewis’s job? Well, that remains to be seen, but I defy anyone to watch Amazon’s 2020 festive commercial contribution without blubbing.

When it first aired during Bake Off last week, the old man and I were choking and sobbing and searching down the back of the sofa for bits of old toilet paper to blow our noses on.

By now everyone should have seen it, but for those who are coping with lockdown 2.0 sans telly, the gist of the ad is that a young ballerina, played by French ballet dancer Taïs Vinolo, is chosen to be the star of her dance school’s Christmas show and gets to try on a fabulous feather and diamante headdress. Then it follows a montage of scenes depicting the onset of lockdown, with our heroine still diligently practicing in Zoom rehearsals with her classmates, at home in her bedroom and on the stairs of the block of flats where she lives.