Big-bellied chimney frequenter coming to town

Here's a few elegant variations for Father Christmas from former trainee, now health correspondent at Archant Norfolk, Kim Briscoe. Last year Kim referred to Santa as 'the bearded icon' in her round-up of Christmas grottos. This year, with tongues in cheeks, Kim and her colleagues have so far offered:  
Big-bellied chimney frequenter
Reindeer-keeping present giver
Ubiquitous red-suited gentleman
and, somewhat unfairly, 
Burgeoning, white-bearded fraudster.
They are now suggesting a competition to find the best. I'm not sure I should be encouraging this sort of thing, but killing time on a crowded train from London tonight I mused over:
Hirsute ruby-suited philanthropist
Whiskery seasonal gift distributor
Jocular overweight elf supervisor
Rotund sleigh-riding altruist 
Giles Coren would be so proud. All of this nonsense was brought to my attention by Kim's husband, and David Powles, senior content editor at Norwich, who is on the Modern Editor's course I am running at PA in London this week. So while David was ploughing through strategic planning, cost analysis, budgeting, radical revenue streams, entrepreneurial journalism and the future of print, it's nice to know at least his missus was having fun back in the office.
If you have any more elegant variations for Santa, let's have them and I will forward them to the Norwich newsroom.

Kylie: Not a "diminutive Antipodean chanteuse"

We were discussing elegant variations here last week, so it was timely to see an excellent addition to the list from Giles Coren in an article in the Independent on Sunday yesterday. Coren is quoted as saying:
When I started as editor of the Times diary (diaries are always the worst for cliché, as they're staffed by over-educated public schoolboys desperately trying to be noticed), I wrote up a list of words and sentences I would not stand for. At the top was, "diminutive Antipodean chanteuse", which used to feature practically weekly in the diary of my predecessor. What Kylie Minogue is, I told my dribbling, pink-faced underlings, is a short Australian singer. If you think people need to be told that, tell them. That is not a cliché. That is just language. "Diminutive Antipodean chanteuse", however, is just bollocks. Indeed, it is bollocks on stilts (to use a cliché I have always rather liked). 
The longer version of Coren's quote is blogged by John Rentoul who has written a book called The Banned List: A manifesto against jargon and cliche. I have already added it to my Christmas list  - and suggested to the trainees they do the same. And if you have regular 'transactional behaviour' with any politicians, you now have the flawless Yuletide donation notion (or, for all you simple souls, the  perfect Christmas gift idea). 

Hat-tip to @Petercampbell1

The strange case of the cutting-edge valise

The Mail trainee subs had a good afternoon with executive night editor Andy Gregory. Andy, once a Northern Echo colleague, gave a real insight into the way the Mail subs desk operates. He also touched on elegant variations. The phrase was coined by Fowler in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, to refer to unnecessary synonyms. Fowler said: "It is the second-rate writers, those intent rather on expressing themselves prettily than on conveying their meaning clearly and still more those whose notions of style are based on a few misleading rules of thumb, that are chiefly open to the allurements of elegant variation. The fatal influence is the advice given to young writers never to use the same word twice in a sentence or within 20 lines or other limit."
Newspaper subs regularly encounter writers who don't like to use the same word twice, so seek elegant (or as the Americans call them, inelegant) variations. Some subs desks refer to them as povs, which stands for popular orange vegetable, a phrase supposedly edited out of an article about carrots. I have a story about a cow causing chaos on a motorway which I often give to trainee subs as an exercise. It is fascinating to watch the cow change into an animal, a beast and finally into a farmyard creature. In Andy's 30 years of subbing he has been collecting the examples that have crossed his desk at both the Express and the Mail. 
He shared some with the trainees today. See if you can work out what they are:
The popular fish-eating mammal
The tin-legged flying ace
Single-lens accessory
Love-it or loathe-it condiment
One of the world's best-loved insects
Red leather orb
Tasty bread-based snacks
The cutting-edge valise
Fantastic. They would make a great stocking-filler book. The answers are below. If you have any more examples, I would be delighted to receive them.
Answers: Otter; Douglas Bader; monocle; Marmite; bee; cricket ball; sandwiches; suitcase on wheels.