From Hancock's 'moobs' to Braverman's 'bullying' - 2023 was a year to forget
Who can blame you for wanting to boot 2023 out of your front door tomorrow night waving two fingers at it as it bounces into the dustbin of history?
There were gruesome wars in two countries only a budget airline flight away, a cost of living crisis that left millions skint, a wave of public sector strikes against low pay, a never-ending Tory civil war that kept the country in paralysis and planet Earth carried on boiling to death.
But it wasn’t all bad. Interest rates peaked, Donald Trump was ordered to face four different courts, decent films returned to the cinemas and, erm, if that’s all I can think of I’d better get on with handing out my bouquets and brickbats...
Holly Willoughby (Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)Worst Sound
The candidates were: Whenever Laurence Fox opened his mouth on GB News (before he was permanently silenced), the documentary co-made by David Beckham about himself where everyone agreed he was a genius and a decent guy (neatly missing out any of his alleged affairs), and the grovelling and hypocritical rewriting of history from royal pundits about Charles and Camilla during his Coronation.
But nothing could match Holly Willoughby asking This Morning viewers as she returned to the couch after Phillip Schofield was forced off the show: “Right, deep breath.Firstly, are you OK?” Which nobody was after hearing her fake emoting.
Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade
Matt Hancock gets an earful (Channel 4)Best Quote
Hugh Grant takes bronze for admitting why he played an Oompa Loompa in Wonka: “I have lots of children and need money.”
Taking silver is Nick Robinson for telling Nadine Dorries “you’re just a bad loser in a sulk who left the Commons because you didn’t get a peerage aren’t you?”.
But gold goes to Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins interrogator Debs who, referencing his affair, asked Matt Hancock. “You’re not a good looking guy, are you? Pubes on your chest, moobs, so how did you do it, Matty, babe?” and when he responded “Well” she screamed back: “What kind of a f-ing arrogant, c-sucking answer is that, you weasel-faced ****?”
Ricky Gervais (PA)
Paul McCartney (Getty Images)Best Man
Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney masterminded records that took The Rolling Stones and The Beatles back to the top of the charts six decades after they began.
Actor Brian Cox was his usual excellent self in the final series of Succession and on Radio 4’s Today show when yelling “absolute b***ocks”.
But the winner is Ricky Gervais for not only breaking every record on his world Armageddon tour, but for donating £1.91m from it to animal charities and saying: “I hope the dogs, cats, rhinos and monkeys invest this money wisely, because when my career goes t**s up I’ll need it back.”
Andrew Tate (AP)Worst Man
Elon Musk bought, then did his best to destroy, Twitter. Nigel Farage had the gall to admit “Brexit has failed” then toddled off to the jungle to earn £1.5million on the back of his notoriety.
James Dyson tried to use his billions to crush honest criticism from the Mirror by taking us to court. And lost.
Tory deputy chairman Lee “30p” Anderson demonised the poor, claiming to know a family which visits foodbanks “two to three times a week” whom he also sees in McDonald’s “two or three times a week”.
But no male turned the stomach as much as the vile, conspiracy theorist ‘influencer’ Andrew Tate who took misogyny to a new low.
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Worst Sight
Matt Hancock doing an impression of Barbie’s Ken; Matt Hancock acting macho on Celebrity Who Dares Wins; and Matt Hancock playing the martyr at the Covid Inquiry could easily have won.
As could David Cameron schmoozing his way back to Foreign Secretary after screwing the country with his Brexit referendum, and Spain’s football president Luis Rubiales for kissing a woman’s mouth after she won the World Cup.
But none of those stomach-turners could match the sight of Liz Truss brazenly taking pride of place at the Coronation and Cenotaph alongside other ex-Prime Ministers when she had held that office for the lifespan of a crane fly.
Suella Braverman (AFP via Getty Images)Worst Woman
Sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell refused to apologise to her victims, instead telling them to get on with their lives. Slippery bra queen Baroness Michelle Mone finally admitted, after three years of concealment, her direct involvement in a dodgy £200m Tory government PPE deal.
And Nadine Dorries threw the hissiest of fits when she realised she was not going to the Lords as Liar Johnson had promised, by turning her back on her MP duties.
But none stooped as deep into the gutter as Suella Braverman who made a blatant play for the Tory leadership with a one-woman Enoch Powell tribute act that turned on every fascist in the land.
Georgia Harrison (Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)Best Woman
Sarah Lancashire had us transfixed with her brilliance in the final series of Happy Valley. Reality star Georgia Harrison showed immense courage in campaigning for victims of revenge porn after waiving her right to anonymity when her (now jailed) ex-partner secretly filmed them having sex and posted it online.
But the winner is Jodie Comer. Not only did she land a prestigious Tony Award for her one-woman tour de force in Prima Facie, her first ever stage play, but when asked by Vogue what change she would most like to see in the UK she replied: “The end of a Tory government. Please and thank you.” Amen to that.
Lorna Rose Treen (PA)Unfunniest Joke
Donald Trump reached peak self-delusion as he faced 91 criminal offences and whined: “I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela.”
Tory MPs called Bone and Pincher were suspended from the Commons for being sex pests. And 30-year-old Charlotte Owen made her maiden speech in the Lords, praising her former boss (and eerie lookalike) Liar Johnson who had parachuted her into a lifelong £342-a-day tax-free job.
But the winner was literally an unfunny joke. The gag by Lorna Rose Treen, voted as the best at the Edinburgh fringe: “I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.”
What strength of hash were those judges on?
Benjamin Zephaniah (Getty Images)
Glenda Jackson (Getty Images)Gone but Never Forgotten
We said a sad farewell to so many famous people who were genuinely loved and thanked them for what they had given to us. So raise a glass to the magnificence that will always be… Paul O’Grady, Tony Bennett, Barry Humphries, Glenda Jackson, Sinead O’Connor, Tina Turner, Michael Parkinson, Harry Belafonte, Raquel Welch, Burt Bacharach, Bobby Charlton, Terry Venables, Jeff Beck, Michael Gambon, Dean Sullivan, Matthew Perry, Glenys Kinnock, Shane MacGowan, Benjamin Zephaniah and anyone you loved and mourned whom I’ve overlooked. Rest in power.
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