Paul Kirkley’s A to Z of 2021: Your alphabetical guide to the worst year on planet Earth since the last one
A is for ABBAtar. Just when all hope for humanity seemed lost, Sweden’s most famous export outside the IKEA meatball re-assembled themselves in the form of robots, or jpegs, or something like that, for their first new music in 40 years. Which was lovely – although, on the downside, it does seriously raise the threat level of a Mamma Mia 3.
B is for bum flare man. Gareth Southgate and his Euros squad may have carried themselves with immense dignity on the way to England’s first major championship final in half a century. But it was 25-year-old Charlie Perry, who downed 20 cans of cider before sticking a lit flare up his bunghole as part of a rampaging drunken mob outside Wembley Stadium, who probably best captured the spirit of modern Britain.
C is for convivial fraternal spirit. That was the reason given by Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg for why MPs on Conservative benches didn’t need to wear masks to protect them from coronavirus. Other epidemiologists are available (thank god).
D is for diddly-dum, diddly-dum, wooo-ee-oooo, you’re nicked. According to Tory MP Nick Fletcher, boys and young men are being driven to crime because Doctor Who is now a woman. Which doesn’t really explain why there were so many CyberMEN behaving badly when Tom Baker, Matt Smith et al had the keys to the TARDIS.
E is for Emma Raducanu, the then 18-year-old from Bromley who stormed from nowhere to win the US Open tennis championships. She also made Piers Morgan, who’d spent the summer slagging her off, look like a proper chump – though, to be fair, that’s a lot easier than winning a Grand Slam tennis title.
F is for forgive me… I did have an entry for F. I just… forgive me. I just need to… forgive me. Shall we move onto G?
G is for GB News, aka GBeebies. Question: If Andrew Neil’s career falls over in an abandoned shipping container-cum-TV studio, and no-one is there to watch it, did it really happen?
H is for hands, face, a**e. Matt Hancock’s inability to socially distance his tongue from his aide’s tonsils cost him his job as health secretary. (Because presiding over ‘the UK’s worst public health failure ever’ wasn’t reason enough on its own, apparently.)
I is for Inspector Raab, the doughty justice secretary who thinks you can’t investigate crimes if they’ve already happened.
J is for jet. Always ready to lead by bad example, Boris Johnson took a private jet home from the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow to attend a slap-up dinner with his climate change-denying chums from the Daily Telegraph. Fill in your own hot air joke here.
K is for Brexit. Yes, I know Brexit starts with a B, but you’re not really allowed to talk about it these days, so I’m slipping it in under the radar. Anyway, long story short: apart from the massive supply chain issues, a chronic shortage of workers and lorry drivers, food rotting in the fields, fish rotting on the harbour, farmers slaughtering pigs in their thousands, the threat to peace in Northern Ireland, damage to our relationship with Europe, the US and the world, a hammer blow to investment in scientific research and development, and a bigger negative impact on the UK economy even than Covid (according to the government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility), it’s all going really, really well.
L is for Lulu Lytle. Poor old Boris and Carrie. With only a piffling £30,000 annual allowance to do up their Downing Street flat, the Prime minister had to resort to begging for cash from a Tory donor in order to afford those vital £800 rolls of real gold wallpaper from the Lulu Lytle Essentials Range. As you may recall, Carrie had complained about Theresa May leaving the place looking like ‘a John Lewis nightmare’. I mean, how awful for them. And what a PR gift for John Lewis Cambridge, whose address just happens to be… 10 Downing Street.
M is for Meghan and Harry, who just wanted to be left alone to live their lives in peace like any other normal couple with their own multimillion-dollar Netflix and Spotify deals. And yet, somehow, they still managed to be among the least awful members of the family. Meme of the year, meanwhile, was Oprah Winfrey’s dramatic question: “Were you silent… or silenced?”
N is for Nadine Dorries, culture secretary. That’s it. That’s the joke.
O is for omicron. As many were quick to point out, ‘omicron’ is an anagram of ‘moronic’. Speaking of which, congratulations to raving anti-vax nutjob Piers Corbyn – who, in a tough field, this year managed the seemingly impossible feat of being both Britain’s worst Piers and its worst Corbyn.
P is for Peppa Pig World. The Prime Minister’s idea of a model nation state, and his blueprint for the future of Britain. Presumably because there’ll be lots of troughs for him and his mates to stick their snouts in.
Q is for QAnon. Spare a thought – by which I mean a laugh – for Jacob Anthony Chansley, the horned QAnon conspiracy loon who began the year acting the big I am, storming into the US Capitol dressed like a cross between Jamiroquai and a cow, and ended it serving a 41-month jail sentence for being a colossal tool. (I’m not sure that was the actual charge, but it’s near enough.)
R is for Randox, the ‘healthcare’ (it says here) firm whose £100,000 retainer to dodgy MP Owen Patterson helped make Tory Sleaze the biggest ’90s comeback this side of the Friends reunion. In entirely unrelated news, Randox secured £480m of government healthcare contracts. I know – what are the odds? Meanwhile, former Tory leader (no, really, he was – Google it) Iain Duncan Smith chaired a government task force that recommended the use of alcohol-free hand sanitisers in the fight against coronavirus. Given that IDS is paid £25k a year to advise Byotrol, a leading supplier of alcohol-free sanitisers, he must have been rubbing his hands together.
S is for space, the final frontier – which is where the 90-year-old William Shatner – Captain Kirk himself – boldly went in October, embarking on an 11-minute mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations, and avoid barfing on Jeff Bezos’s head.
T is for testicles. Specifically, the giant testicles alleged to belong to Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend, which the US rapper said had swollen to Buster Gonad proportions following his Covid-19 vaccination. The bizarre claim led to a spat with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg – though not, sadly, in the form of a rap battle.
U is for United States of Disappointment. Of course, we can all take comfort from the fact the Leader of the Free World is no longer a crazed orang-utan throwing his own faeces around the Oval Office. But the euphoria of Joe Biden’s inauguration – the one major bright spot in a dismal five-year news cycle – quickly turned to ashes during his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. And that, readers, is why we can’t have nice things.
V is for virtual quiz, which is what the Prime Minister insists he hosted in Downing Street last Christmas, despite the other quizzers being in the same room, draped in tinsel. It’s one of several parties that definitely didn’t happen, and the Prime Minister should know, because he definitely wasn’t there when they didn’t happen, and has been assured that all social distancing rules were followed to the letter at the events that didn’t happen. Luckily, cabinet secretary Simon Case was on the case, until it proved to be the case that the case also involved Simon Case, after which it was a case of: case closed.
W is for WhatsApp, one of David Cameron’s chosen private messaging channels when he was grubbing around trying to exploit government contracts for vast personal financial reward. If there’s one person whose reputation you wouldn’t think could sink any lower, it’s David Cameron. But somehow he managed it. Britain salutes you, sir.
X is for The X Factor – or should that be The Ex Factor – amarite? – as Simon Cowell’s TV karaoke contest finally bit the bullet after 17 years. Which just goes to show: 2021 wasn’t all bad news.
Y is for you have no authority here, Jackie Weaver. In February, a 62-year-old Cheshire council officer became the unlikely champion of every woman who’s ever been bullied, patronised or talked over by male colleagues, when a fractious online meeting of Handforth Parish Council became a global internet sensation. As well as being screamed at to “read the standing orders – READ THEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM!”, Ms Weaver was told in no uncertain terms that that she had “no authority here – no authority at all!”. Tory MPs are currently thought to be delivering a similar message to the Prime Minister.
Z is for Zoom. I know, I know. Z was for Zoom in last year’s A-Z. And, the way things are heading, it will be in next year’s, too. Maybe we should just accept that Zoom is where we live now – like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, but with less dodging slo-mo bullets and more people saying “Can you ping an email round about that?”.
Anyway, Happy New Year, I guess.
Read more from Paul Kirkley, Columnist of the Year at the UK Regional Press Awards, in the Cambridge Independent each month.