"Can you bring my daddy a job?"

Others have become so tired of being asked for iPods they have prepared stock answers to get around it.

Fred Honerkamp, a Santa graduate who also lectures at the school, said that he had come up with his own story of an errant elf to in the North Pole explain why children can’t have everything.

He said: ‘It’s hard to watch sometimes because the children are like little barometers, mirrors on what the country has been through.

‘In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything.’