My Christmas with Macaulay Culkin

Stretch limos, Lego snow, reindeer on the menu... Sean Hardy looks back at his oddest Christmas - in the bosom of the child star's family

Teachers find themselves up to some funny business just before Christmas - explaining to your mates the glitter in your hair, lying to small children about Father Christmas. The real meaning of Christmas - by which of course I mean shopping - gets left till after the end of term. Except, that is, for one Christmas when I decided to do some freelance work. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young movie star in possession of a publicity entourage must be in want of a tutor. It's an odd job, nearer nannying than classroom teaching, but it has its returns, particularly if the "classroom" is the travelling circus of a European publicity tour - in the run-up to Christmas.

Day one: London

I turn up early at a Mayfair hotel and phone up from reception to the suite where Culkin pere, mere and younger brother Kieran are staying along with "Mac". I am not expected. I am not wanted (everyone is significantly jetlagged). I am sent away. Not a good start. I sit under an oversized Christmas tree in the lobby and go through my stock of American "math" books.

The PR woman from 20th Century Fox turns up with the list of today's engagements - a mixture of interviews in the hotel and trips to television studios and special screenings - a format that will be repeated around Europe. She expresses some surprise that no lessons have taken place, as now there will be no time for any. Not for the last time, I feel a bit redundant - but head upstairs to meet the family. It turns out my two wards, Mac and Kieran, have already finished term in New York, but do have some books to read and projects to complete. They look almost translucently pale through lack of sleep, but are wide-eyed and wildly excited about London.

First stop: Stockholm

This is a great way to travel! It turns out, if you're a VIP (as opposed to a teacher) the real grit of travel is removed. You never see your luggage. It is spirited from hotel to limousine (Daimler in London - generic "stretch" everywhere else) to plane to limousine, and the purgatory of the airport is passed in the relative heaven of the VIP lounge - another unlikely classroom.

Stockholm affords all things Yule - snow, skating, Christmas fairs, the Nobel prize gathering, reindeer (on the menu) and a winter-scape Lego set in the suite when we arrive. The Fox publicity guys in Sweden are game for a good deal of Lego rearranging and snowball fights. Gamely, Mac carries on with the interviews - same questions, same anecdotes. I settle into a highly flexible post as tour guide and interpreter of the strange ways of Europeans. On the way back from the Old Town with Kieran we pass the 19th-century opera houses, which after a bit of begging will show a child and tutor backstage. Kieran subsequently tells his Lego chums from Fox and next thing, should we want them, there are tickets to tonight's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Culkin boys are attentive ballet-watchers. Word spreads round Fox Europe, and shows are booked to fit the itinerary.

Next Stop: Paris

Paris is posh. The food's posh, and the art's posh and the shopping's posh. It helps a lot, I find out, if you arrive at shops and restaurants in a stretch limo - then you will be forgiven anything - even arriving with children. The Plaza Athenee hotel is well posh - you're not allowed running gear in the lobby. They even unpack your bags, which verges on the embarrassing. Mac and Kieran have been collecting hotel freebies - aftershaves and chocolates - which are dutifully unpacked by the new hotel: their loo looks like a Boots. We have a bank of suites along the Avenue Montaigne, all Louis XV and shag pile. The boys and I search for their telly which rises out of a glass-topped dressing table. First night, dinner out with the Fox office on one of the bateaux mouches that ply their business up and down the Seine each night, floodlighting the sights and the bank-side lovers. Mac and Kieran do important damage to the American abroad stereotype and endear themselves enormously to the French by downing plates of frogs' legs and snails.

Kit and Pat - Mom and Dad Culkin - are finding it tougher going than the boys and choose, it has to be said, one of the world's great venues, comfortable with solid silver room service, to settle into colds. We leave them surrounded by soup dishes and the train set (courtesy of Fox France) and head off to explore Paris in our little limo. Mac comes over all filial and decides this is the place to get Mom perfume for Christmas, so we stop off at Fragonard and another terrifyingly classy place near the Louvre. Mac is recognised in both and we come away loaded down with samples and giveaways - and the odd purchase.

Back at the Plaza Athenee they are getting to know us. We are invited to a grand dinner in the hotel's restaurant - it's all showmanship, caviar and flambeed sauces, wines older than me; and the boys adore it. At one point various chefs can be seen craning and peering in at the windows.

Hanging Out in Hamburg

Well into the second week, and no let-up. At each airport, ushered through the VIP route, we meet the local Fox team and have an update, like regional weather, of how the film is faring. A lot of on-the-hop lessons, but much more general chat about each country, as best I can. It's certainly an education no classroom can offer.

I'm continually bemused by the interest shown by the press; a triumph of marketing and PR. Seemingly, you can arrive in a capital and see representatives of every major paper, TV and radio station in less than 48 hours. You can do this even if you are a kid - and, as Costner said: "They will come." Why doesn't this happen with important scientists? Why does no one do publicity tours for the hottest new teachers?

Hamburg's attractions, famously, are not for the under-aged. It's just as well that the vast Atlantic Hotel provides ideal in-house entertainments, the imposing corridors ideal for racing remote control cars (courtesy of Fox Germany), its pool quite large enough to swing a kid in - though you won't thereby endear yourself to its more regular clientele. We befriend another American out of water - the hotel pianist who hangs out in the pool as well. She and Mac end up doing duets in the lobby on our last evening.

Madrid

The Spanish do things differently. There seem to be parties organised to cope with all the press interest, or is it the closeness of Christmas? The hotel has a big early evening bash as we arrive, from which Mac is repeatedly extracted to do interviews. The Fox crowd all head off clubbing after that but are back on duty early the next morning.

There is a long, boozy lunch - the different Fox offices seem determined to uphold the honour of their national cuisines; this is not for the faint- hearted or the vegetarian. Lunch turns into evening drinks turns into another party. Don't these people have offices to go to? Spotting a break in the schedules I suggest a trip out for Mac and Kieran and again we view a city from behind smoked glass. We end up at the Prado, which, what with Goya and the Hapsburgs, affords sufficient good stories and grotesques to keep the kids interested. There's also a tapas bar nearby I particularly recommend for the ghoulish young; it's lined with stuffed bull heads and photo-montages of famous toreadors being gouged to death. Beats the London Dungeon any day.

Paris (for the last time):

And so back to Paris. Mac's agent flew over to see how things were. Things were pretty good, but it's odd how Hollywood makes its presence felt. It turns out that only Lufthansa has proper First Class - as opposed to generic we're-better-than-you class - on internal European flights. Did you know that? I didn't. Apparently, therefore, another Major Player had had a private jet for a European publicity tour - and Concorde home.

These things really do matter in the ecosystem that is Hollywood of course, and suddenly the Culkins are to fly back on Concorde from Paris - not on a pleb plane from Gatwick. This leaves the bank of suites at the Plaza - and their other prerequisite, the tutor - somewhat at a loose end for the weekend. They disappeared up the Avenue Montaigne, the limo piled high with boxes of presents - mainly opened already. The end of term that year was toasted in a staffroom of one - courtesy of the mini bar.