January
• Jeremy Corbyn turns down invitation to attend Davos, saying he will be oiling his bicycle that week.
• Sir Robert Owen publishes the report of his inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko. Blames Russia. Russia declares war. Owen report is immediately withdrawn, and Sir John Chilcot asked to re-examine the evidence. Report on the alleged poisoning of Litvinenko now expected in 2027.
February
• Mosima Sexwale, the flamboyant South African businessman more widely known as Tokyo Sexwale, becomes president of Fifa, narrowly beating the French diplomat Jérôme Champagne. Delegates decide the vote on the basis of who has the silliest name.
• Adele makes a three-hour speech at the Brit awards. Everything Everything win everything.
• Parliamentary elections in Iran see heavy losses for the Liberal Democrats.
• Cate Blanchett wins her annual Oscar. Award for the best foreign-language film goes to the epic Japanese coming-of-age saga Tokyo Sexwale.
March
• Hillary Clinton seals the Democratic presidential nomination on Super Tuesday. Republican hopeful Donald Trump does well everywhere except Texas, where he is dismissed as too liberal.
• Tenth anniversary of first tweet marked with slew of articles bemoaning the decline of Twitter. “There are no characters lef”, complains one veteran tweeter.
• A horse wins the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
• Cambridge win the Boat Race. Or was it Oxford?
April
• The Queen’s 90th birthday is met with national rejoicing. Fearne Cotton, whose presentation of the Diamond Jubilee royal pageant was widely criticised (mainly by the Daily Telegraph), is not invited to commentate on the festivities at Windsor. Katherine Jenkins leads the singing of Happy Birthday, leading to immediate calls for Cotton to be reinstated.
• Another horse wins the Grand National.
• David Tennant heads the cast for a celebrity event marking the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. BBC director-general Tony Hall declares the corporation’s ambition is “to get more people excited about Shakespeare than ever before – through drama, great performance, documentary, festivals and social media”. Unfortunately a Twitter relay of Hamlet proves something of a damp squib. “When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!,” thunders a leader column in the Times, castigating dumbing down at the BBC and calling for it to be privatised.
• Jeremy Corbyn announces his fourth reshuffle. The Telegraph dubs it the Night of the Long Bicycle Clips. Andy Burnham hangs on to his post as shadow minister of state for rugby league, arguing that party unity must be preserved at all costs.
May
• New series of Top Gear begins. Met with national rejoicing, except in Chipping Norton.
• The SNP wins every seat in the Scottish parliament. Jeremy Corbyn describes it as a minor setback in the battle to win back Scotland.
• Heavy Labour losses in local elections, but Sadiq Khan enjoys a narrow win over the Tories’ Zac Goldsmith in the London mayoral election. Liberal Democrats are squeezed into eighth place, just behind a bollard from Enfield standing as an independent.
• Forty-one police and crime commissioners are elected, but no one is exactly sure why.
• Bob Dylan’s 75th birthday is met with global rejoicing.
• Much booing/applauding of good/bad/indifferent films at Cannes. A five-and-a-half-hour existential drama drawing on Peruvian peasant life wins the Palme d’Or. The chairman of the jury describes it as “the supreme achievement of Peruvian national cinema”.
• Estonian rock band Ultima Thule’s Mu isamaa, Õnne soovime sul wins the Eurovision song contest.
• End of the Premier League season sees Leicester crowned champions and Chelsea relegated. Jeremy Corbyn describes it as a minor setback for the managerless club.
• The 100th anniversary on 16 May of the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which the British and French carved up the Ottoman empire and ensured perpetual peace in the Middle East, is met with national rejoicing.
June
• Astronaut Tim Peake returns to Earth. He is immediately named as a contestant in the autumn series of Strictly Come Dancing, alongside Ed Balls, Fearne Cotton, José Mourinho, Katherine Jenkins, Tomasz Schafernaker, Vladimir Putin, Monsignor Bruce Kent, Baroness Mone, the bass player from Ultima Thule, Chris Robshaw, someone from EastEnders, someone else from Coronation Street, Oliver Letwin, a random boxer and Tokyo Sexwale.
• Albania are surprise winners of the European football championships. England fail to progress beyond the group stage. Jeremy Corbyn describes the 8-0 loss to Slovakia that seals their fate as a minor setback.
• The government postpones the decision on expanding airport capacity in the south-east, and says Sir John Chilcot will undertake a fresh examination of the options. His report is expected in 2034.
• The Duke of Edinburgh’s 95th birthday is met with national rejoicing. (Will any readers left at this point please add the obligatory reference to Fearne Cotton and Katherine Jenkins.)
• The £200m Tate Modern extension is opened to national caterwauling. Prince Charles denounces it as a “monstrous carbuncle”.
• The Dalai Lama is the star turn at the Glastonbury festival, playing the Tibetan horn alongside Ultima Thule and Everything Everything.
July
• Sir John Chilcot says he has so many other inquiries on his plate that his original inquiry into the Iraq war will be further delayed, and that he now expects to complete it by 2042.
• Slovakia, fresh from that 8-0 win over England, assumes the presidency of the European council. David Cameron is so annoyed he announces the EU referendum will be a week on Thursday, backing down only when he discovers it would clash with the first day of the Lord’s Test.
• Donald Trump is nominated as Republican presidential candidate at the party’s convention in Cleveland. Comedians around the world celebrate. Everyone else lays in supplies of survival rations.
August
• Britain performs disappointingly in the Rio Olympics, though it does sweep the board in the small-bore shooting events. “We are now a nation of small bores,” quips David Cameron. Jeremy Corbyn calls the UK’s 63rd place in the medal table – below Estonia, Albania, Slovakia and Peru – a minor setback.
• The Edinburgh festival proves to be another triumph for small bores.
• Other than the Olympics and the Edinburgh festival, not much happens in August, give or take the odd war, famine, pestilence and plague of frogs, which everyone overlooks because they’re on holiday.
September
• Elections for the Russian State Duma. Liberal Democrats do badly.
• Jeremy Corbyn is ousted after a vote of no confidence at the Labour party’s annual conference in Liverpool. Describes it as a minor setback. Angela Eagle – or possibly her sister – becomes leader.
October
• David Cameron announces at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham that he does not intend to step down before the next election but will “go on and on”. Boris Johnson falls off the stage.
• On the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, asks Sir John Chilcot to examine the reasons for the English defeat at the hands of the Normans. Chilcot says he is confident of reporting by 2066.
November
• Hillary Clinton wins the US presidency. Phew!
December
• Strictly Come Dancing is won by someone from EastEnders, narrowly beating someone else from Coronation Street and the random boxer in the final. There are rumours that Donald Trump will star in the show in 2017. And possibly Sir John Chilcot – if he can find the time.
