Celebrating your birthday may not be high on the priority list when sitting down for Christmas dinner, but it is for me.

Christmas Day may be for festive cheer and goodwill, but for a birthday boy unable to go to the pub, it's slightly different. While many are buried under turkey trimmings and cheap Christmas cracker jokes, I'd very much like to be six pints down at the local boozer with soggy carpets.

As the late Queen Elizabeth II had two birthdays, as do I. In fact, I'd love nothing more than hitting the streets with my pals to mark 25 years on this planet, even if it means it's on another day... but there is one big catch.

Three glasses of red, an espresso martini, 16 pornstar martinis and a bottle of Corona later

It's really not that simple when you've got friends tucking cash away to buy presents for their so-called loved ones. Few are interested in a cold November night touring the streets of Leeds. But a single student discount passed around the 12 of us like the one hand warmer in a locked freezer, is a golden resource.

The last time I celebrated my birthday I won the Premier League on Football Manager (I'm no professional) and damaged my knee bouncing around at a Yard Act gig. A much different experience for turning 25, a quieter time, which is probably how outmoded electronics feel when put on the scrap heap. There is not much more to be done, other than celebrate the inevitable quarter-life crisis on the horizon.

A fine cut of steak and three large glasses of house red at Flat Iron is as great a beginning as any. Develop the palette to match that frontal lobe which, now in place, is erasing memories of gig-going experiences and replacing them with which day the recycling needs to be taken out. The horror. But so it shall be on the highway of life, and no amount of cocktails can stop that.

Still, 16 martinis is an honest try. It is also, I have found, enough to make me feel very sick. I have learned my lesson and to cheer myself up (and also for nearly regurgitating the Harvester fish and chips the evening afterwards) I headed to the reliable frontier of gigging. A staple of any elongated birthday celebration, throwing yourself around in a pit with strangers is what keeps the heart pumping.

But there was no sense launching around the First Direct Arena, no. Instead it was right to the back, to look over the crowd of lime green balaclavas to get a glimpse of Fontaines D.C. and, the night after, a sit down to watch Sam Fender.

Thankfully, someone broadcast the entirety of the Newcastle v Liverpool match and, as a neutral watching from four rows behind on a phone held by someone who looked oddly similar to Peter Beardsley, it was a treat. This, while a little slapdash and erratic, is a far stretch better than slicing into a Christmas cake with a limp candle jammed in the top. The phrase "Merry Christmas," should never be followed by "and happy birthday," but such is life.