January
Birdsong
At one point, Eddie Redmayne took so long to look up, bashfully, at Isabelle, that his eyes moved at the rate of what is scientifically proven to be the slowest, most effortfully advancing thing known to man: a Goth trying to climb up a rope. His eyes just ... hung off the bottom of the rope, uselessly; waiting for a bum shift-up from the teacher.
February
Madonna at the Super Bowl
Blimey — you, Madonna. You astride a gigantic golden throne, being hauled into the Super Bowl arena ... I am looking at you, Madonna. Just like I have all my life. God I have drunk a lot of this brandy. I fragging lobe you, Madonna! Where have all my crisps gone?
March
Advertisement
The Voice
The judges on The Voice will judge only what they hear. I had initially hoped that this was because the contestants would be hiding in some manner of forest or maze, and that the judges would have to hunt them down — following their voices like rare songbirds. In the event, however, it was because the chairs the judges were sitting on were simply facing the wrong way. Sometimes, 2012 is a massive disappointment.
April
The Plot to Bring Down Britain’s Planes
Intending to make the bomb in a soft drinks bottle, Sarwar was deputised to go to his local cornershop in Walthamstow, where he was seen acting “suspiciously” — standing in front of a chiller cabinet, and experimenting with various bottles, to see how securely their lids were attached ... Why didn’t he just buy the drinks and experiment at home? If he’d got them from Sainsbury’s, he could have done a BOGOF and got Nectar points. One fact that comes across is that al-Qaeda are very poor shoppers.
May
56up
One of the big signs of getting older — even more marked than noting policemen looking increasingly youthful, or your knees “going funny” on the stairs — is feeling that the gaps between instalments of the Up series are getting shorter.
Advertisement
June
Eurovision
In the past 24 years Britain has seen Acid House, Britpop, trip-hop and dubstep — and yet, judging by what we’ve sent to Eurovision, we might as well have been represented by Britain’s Second World War entertainment corps, Ensa, or Henry VIII’s court jester, or, I dunno ... Engelbert Humperdinck.
July
Bank of Dave
Where do banks come from? History, perhaps; or space. No one’s absolutely sure. They’ve just always been here. Barclays and Lloyds were formed, layer upon sediment layer, over billions of years, like the White Cliffs of Dover or the Grand Canyon.
August
Advertisement
Table tennis at the Olympics
I’ll be honest — watching the Olympics’ ping-pong tournament this year is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone play the game without a massive glass of red wine in one hand and a four-year-old asleep under the table ... Ping-pong is what you do when you’re in Wales and the telly has S4C instead of Channel 4 and you can’t watch reruns of 24 Hours in A&E.
September
Downton Abbey
The start of the Downton season is the same as the shooting season, or the festival season. It is by way of a nation figuratively lining up into a very polite queue, 38 miles long, to touch the Queen’s face, and say, murmuringly, “I am British”.
October
Elementary
Why was our Sherlock not good enough for them? It’s got a passionate fanbase, Baftas up to its nuts, and international sex-cases Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead roles. I’m sorry, Uncle Sam — did all those fabulous riches in some way offend you? Does that all still seem a bit ... modest, and low-key? Do you want fries with your Sherlock? Do you want to Super-Size Holmes?
Advertisement
November
The Hour
Oh no. No no no no no. Not another series of this agony, The Hour! Not another six episodes of chewing down to the fistbone, howling “GET IT ON! TOUCH HIS TROUSERS!”
December
Bad 25
Spike Lee showed us a box, in Jackson’s recording studio, of a CPR dummy called ‘Little Anne’. When Jackson sings ‘Annie are you OK?’ in Smooth Criminal, he is singing to a puppet in a box, whose purpose is to pretend to be dying. In terms of weirdness, that knocks Ben — sung to a kindly rat — out of the ballpark.