And with more people ambling over from the toy department, the season could be a little bit jollier in Bentonville this year.

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He has presented a jollier image, and people remember that, by local standards, he is cosmopolitan, having spent a couple of years at a school in Switzerland.

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Amazon's holiday was much jollier.

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Which would leave him the option of spending it, if he cannot think of anything more useful, on the English National Opera, London's other great company, where at least the seats are cheaper, the atmosphere jollier, the operatic language English, but where English snobbery and uniformed flunkeys are mercifully absent.

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