The Martian’s release date
How’s this for a conspiracy theory? The very week Ridley Scott’s film about Matt Damon on Mars came out, Nasa announced it had found water there. Scott then claimed he “knew all about it months ago”. Who could have told him that? James Green, Nasa’s Mars spokesman and coincidentally a script consultant on the Martian? Surely not. Anyway, if you look at the red planet hard enough you can see the face of Ben Affleck. And that’s a fact.
David Guetta’s horse
In July of 1977, Bianca Jagger rode a horse into Studio 54 and changed the face of decadence for ever. In July of 2015, a model, dressed in Native American headgear, rode a horse into Pacha, Ibiza, during David Guetta’s opening party and er... well, it just reinforced everything you already knew; the guy’s a ’mare (geddit??!) and corporate hedonism sucks.
The tears of Sandi Thom
As a past-your-very-brief-prime pop star, you only have a couple of options if you want to get noticed. You could try to get your new single playlisted on Radio 2, as Sandi Thom did with Earthquake in November. Or, if that fails (this is Sandi Thom, after all), why not tap into that schadenfreude market by filming yourself crying about how monstrously unfair it all is? If you’re Sandi Thom, you’ve got literally nothing to lose.
Fake ads for androids
Channel 4 began airing ads in the spring for Persona Synthetics, a company that offered to provide “the help you always wanted” in the form of a realistic robot au pair. They would soon be available to buy from a shop (which when you clicked, was still under construction). It all seemed so terrifyingly plausible that it was a relief when the whole thing turned out to be a campaign for new dystopian drama Humans.
SOPHIE’s silicon ‘product’
I’s not enough to bring out branded condoms to flog your music. That’s why UK producer SOPHIE, purveyor of mutant J-pop-inspired dance songs, released a range of silicon “products” to accompany his November album. And when we say “products” we mean a knobbly (and quite intrepid) double-ended dildo. Extreme merch for extreme music? On second thoughts, perhaps we should have seen it coming.
Back To The Future day
If Marty McFly had time-travelled to 21 Oct 2015, instead of hoverboards he would have found something stranger: big brands celebrating his arrival. #BTTFDay was fun for about 15 minutes, until everyone from Nokia to Charmin bog roll got involved (“Where we’re going we don’t need two-ply”). The nadir came at PMQs when David Cameron told Jeremy Corbyn to “get in his DeLorean and go back to 1985 and stay there”. Cringe.
• This article was amended on 21 December 2015. An earlier version online and in print said that it was David Guetta who rode the horse into Pacha, rather than a model at David Guetta’s party.
