Bloody hell, it’s the end of another decade. This time ten years ago the world was going mad for millennium and the more non-calm elements were almost touching cloth over That Bug which never happened in the end. I was in a doomed relationship (I was a replacement for someone else who later returned but it got me back on the horse. No I was not dating a horse) and my friend Jamie was going out with a vegan who he realised was also doomed. Millennium night in London was a huge disappointment due to the ‘spectacular’ aspect being most unspectacular, the doomed man not wanting to kiss me at the stoke of midnight (in public! What would people think?), London being a transport nightmare and the weirdness of running into an old genuinely not-all-there nemesis in the street. Such fun! My friend Jamie rebounded onto a new man that night who didn’t last all that long and I eneded up living with him as pretend man and wife by the end of 2000. Funny how it all turned out.

Anyway, here’s my review of the year with links to old blogs. No rubbish celebrities talking guff to camera allowed.

January
Matt Smith was announced as the 11th Doctor and then silly creatures started moaning about how we was unknown (really?) and too young (yawn). He was in fact a bloody good actor.

The Daily Express announced the death of bins.

Yeah, that happened.

We went to Prague where it was cold, lovely and full of puppets.

February

Alan Carr became even more ‘hilarious’ when he blacked up as Barack Obama, who had an inexplicably shrill gay voice.

Coffee confused me in the World’s Greatest Newspaper.

I joined that Twitter.

Facebook was revealed to be cancer-inducing by the Mail.

March
The pub quiz had a rat themed round which included a question about Dangermouse. We quit soon after.

Michael Jackson announced a shedload of concerts and only two people were not cynical about it ever happening. Oops.

I explained Twitter to some posh women, which became a regular occurence this year.

Battlestar Galactica ended and it was all rather (to quote Doctor 9.0) fantastic.

I spent too much money on Cybermen and had my credit card details stolen in the process. How modern!

April
I bought a Wii Fit and was surprised to find out that I was 5 months pregnant.

Facebook thought I might like some Jewish folk.

Next time: More months of mirth and merriment…

I had been ‘reviewing’ the classic Doctor Who DVDs but then I got busy with life and forgot about the Dalek War box set which contains Frontier In Space and Planet of the Daleks. These two 1973 stories are linked together in the most obvious way by being one bloody long spacey wobbly set romp adventure and are mostly a lot of fun. The Dalek story is good but I’m going to focus on Frontier as it was on telly when I was born and I have more to say about it…

Frontier In Space is six episodes of The Doctor and Jo getting kidnapped, locked up, released, interrogated, locked up, escaping and so on, which makes it sound crappy but it’s great fun to watch, especially with the always-reliable production notes function. In a nutshell, there’s these sibilant lizard types called Draconians (my description sounds more like Brett Anderson from Suede) whose actors wear detailed ruber masks if playing main characters but less so if background artissstesss who get caught up in a massive scheme of The Master’s (when he was still great fun and not a randomly super-powered loon) to cause a massive kerfuffley war drama with the big boys aka Earth. The human big cheeses there are your typical good old 70s supporting characters with funky clothes and snappy dialogue. Not so snappy are those pesky Ogrons who are The Master’s hired help and are a rather dim lot. Inbetween being locked up and unlocked our intrepid travellers try to sort out what the hell is going on with various parties’ perceptions of who is responsible for all the bad behaviour which is, it transpires, down to a handy device which makes people see their fear and therefore creates loads of bloody hassle and tension until this is sorted out and both sides in the potential galactic war pull themselves together. Phew. There’s a moral in there somewhere about paranoia and not reading too much Daily Mail.

Highlights for me include the monster that the Ogrons are scared of turning out to be utterly rubbish in a great way, a weird continuity error where Jo gains a pair of tights between episodes and a trip to the South Bank (not to go to the Tate but to get involved in the umpteenth prison break). Jolly good fun!

One of the first prisons for our dynamic duo. Looks uncannily similar to a later one.

A brief trip out of the studio to the South Bank where Jo’s wide mouth potential scares away the guards.

Not the mind probe! Human big cheeses in big collars for big fun times.

The Master eventually joins our heroes when they are imprisoned once again but decides to ignore their whining.

Daleks turn up, ready for the next story, and have the usual technical issues. They sort themselves out just in time as Planet of the Daleks has an army of thousands of Daleks (allegedly) and a silly plot about invisibility in a studio-bound angry forest.

I am now watching the mammoth Key To Time box set which may take some time (no not really a proper pun intended).

Final batch of Express shite:

Category Seven: SWINE FLU STORIES
Swine Flu (PANIC!) was the perfect event for The World’s Greatest Newspaper as it combined several of its main agendas. If only Princess Diana could have had it too, it would have given the ‘journalists’ an excessive amount of journo-jizz:

Love the panicking headlines followed by a headline moaning about people panicking… and bonus anti-points for the obligatory having a go at migrants. Such a quality newspaper.

‘Fish diet cuts your chance of going blind’ on the Pig Flu Kids front page also deserves a mention so I have linked to the original story. It is, like almost all of their food stories, involving tests on mice. No singalongs please.

I am of course now dead from piggy flu as is everyone who has ever read this blog.

Another day, another load of best worst covers from the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Newspaper…

Category Six: LUNATIC DIET STORIES
Like their Batshit Health Stories only more specific due to being slightly rewritten press releases from organisations who want their bullshit promoted to idiotic morons who’ll believe any old tripe:

The Tea Council got a nice bit of publicity this year when the independent expert the Express quoted was on their payroll so I imagine The Breakfast Club is not just an 80s brat pack film.

Food Top Trumps continued with Coffee beating Alzheimers, Tomato Pill beating Heart Disease (but what about good old plain Tomato?) and then Broccoli beating Heart Disease and probably scoring higher than Tomato Pill as it is real food and not just a pill. Who knows? It’s all bollocks.

Eggs were previously not good for you in Express World (???) then became good until some foreign eggs came over here by sneaking into our egg cartons and made eggs bad again. Luckily Apple Juice was around to help Coffee with Alzheimers by being a blody miracle.

Apple Juice may well be a miraculous drink but Appletize was still dangerous due to being a drink of the fizzy variety (let’s not mention the free Pepsi previously given away). It’s so hard to keep up with all the developments. Sweetener was a silent killer so another reason to switch to savoury but then that was ruined by hidden salt killing loads of people every year…. silently. Shhhhh!

Tomorrow: Swine Flu, if we are not all dead from it as predicted by the Express.

After a short Christmassy break it’s back to the Expressive covers of the year and on with the next category…

Category Four: PRINCESS DIANA STORIES
Diana’s stock plummetted this year as Madeline McCann’s rose in Expressland, which was a shame as I loved the batshit insane theories about why she died, even when the bleedin’ obvious was proven to be as bleedin’ obvious as any sane person thought all along:
Fad diets and the People’s Princess in the same headline? How cheeky. Diana was also an INXS song and then she was axed except this was bollocks.

Category Five: RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA STORIES
The nasty non-comical side of The World’s Greatest Newpaper is best shown in the way they can make The Mail look like a loony lefty 1980s style fanzine with their attitude to anyone who is not English or white enough for their particular world view:
Several examples of lies about immigrants, jobs and money: I wonder if they have an agenda?

“They” are having a baby boom. “Muslims” (all muslims of course , not just a few loonytune extremists) demand Sharia Law. So far so BNP voter recruitment. But what’s this? The biggest lie of all when they call uncle Nicky G a disgrace to humanity.

Pull the other one you racist c*nts.

Tomorrow: Those crazy fad diet stories (oh the irony)…

It is/was Christmas Day (depending on when you read this) and we went to Sexy Brentwood for Day One of Famerlee Christmas. Day Two is Boxing Day in/on Canvey Island but that hasn’t happened yet. I took a few photos there and a few at home so here they are. I warn you, they are not thrilling as they do not adequately capture things like not watching any telly because it is rubbish, eating/drinking four bowls of soup for a starter, receiving (and giving) some lovely presents, wondering why my sister had gift wrapped loads of bananas (maybe for a celebrity cactus?), teasing my mother about the lack of grand children supplied by gay sons, slightly zoning out every time Belgium was mentioned, getting that too much wine feeling or the surprisingly easy M25 journey…

At home: As our lounge is a decoratingesque mess the cards live on the fridge this year, held in place by Doctor Who fridge magnets.

Also at home: One of my lovely new cacti got some bananas from the Torchwood Deaceased Action Figures. Bannakaffalatta sounds a bit like a banana but is not. He is, however, a bit like those coincidental aliens who cropped up later in Doctor Who.

My mother loves her apron and posed with the wok I bought her but that photo was shit so here is a different one.

Lovely table set for dinner in the conservatory. I want one (conservatory not table).

The Goth Archaeologist and her assistant dug some presents out of the wrapping paper. Lots of glasses (of the drinking out of variety).

I got Wii Fit Plus and a big cake, which should cancel each other out nicely.

We got home in plenty of time for Doctor Who. It may have been an after effect of the wine (I may have had mini dozes) but I felt the episode didn’t gel all that well. Too many new plot strands and coincidences for my liking but the big dramatic bits (no spoilers here) were fun, silly and dramatic and I look forward to part two next week.

Eastenders was amusingly Eastendersy where you could play along at home with your Eastenders Cliche Tick Sheet. As is the rule when somebody is going to get murdered off, you have to set up a dozen suspects by having them all get rather annoyed with the vistom then pay him a visit one at a time and go grrr at him. Lots of angry faces, lots of crying acting (except from Westbrook who cannot do the crying face dur to having no nose) and some great slaps. It was full of potential TV Burp clip moments of joy. Also: the Everyone in soap can fit all of their belongings into one average sized bag rule was used brilliantly once more, as was the Pregnant actress can disguise it with big all-weathers coat and permanent massive shoulder bag rule. So many rules.

What’s the greatest headline of the World’s Greatest Newspaper this great year? So many categories to choose from.

Category two: MAD CANCER STORIES
The Express loves its batshit health stories but when it can splice a bit of Cancer in there it goes mad like a child whose been at the Um Bongo:

Did the Ten Easy Ways To Beat Cancer include oxygen, mushrooms and avoiding red meat & jabs? I hope so. It’s mushrooms for breakfast for me again, with a drizzle of oxygen.

Category Three: MADELEINE MCCANN FANTASIST STORIES
Like the Princess Diana Fatasist Stories category (see tomorrow for more on that one) but involving people who will actually sue them for all those mental front pages(oops):

A lot of 2009′s Maddiethon was The Express asking random questions about what happened so as to not be sued again. It’s so easy (and cheaper), although the one about the McCann’s stalker showed a lack of self awareness not seen since Katie Price opened her monotone inflated robo gob.

Tomorrow: Princess Diana: It wasn’t just about not wearing a seatbelt in a speeding car driven by a tipsy man, oh no… and a flood of dirty foreigners!

I have a love/hate relationship with the Daily Express, what with it being The Daily Mail For People Who Find The Mail A Bit Too Sane and Left Wing. What with the self-proclaimed ‘World’s Greatest Newspaper’ brag on the front cover every day and the barely factual ‘exclusives’ it’s almost The Onion but I have to remind myself that it is real when I see copies in other peoples trolleys in the supermarket. I’ve been unadmiring the best worst front pages all year over on my Facebook page and thought it would be nice/horrible to share the high/lowlights in several key categories with the bloggy blog world so…

BATSHIT HEALTH STORIES
The Express loves their health stories more than any other paper and not just because they are cheap barely re-written press releases from strange organisations like The Tea Council. Here are some of my favourites of 2009:

Magic fictitious obesity bugs you can catch or miracle blindness curing eyedrops or wonder jabs or wonder pills or Doctor Who style Cyber enhancements or magic sunshine or *SNIIIIP* So many to choose from, I cannot decide which should win the coveted gold-colour-covered microscope souvenir award. Any ideas?

Tomorrow: Cancer! Serious like a prancing dancer.

Well that’s that all done, again, for the final time. Books Etc was a great little book chain that got bought by the big boys who tried to change it to fit their (flawed) model and then decided they didn’t love it enough to look after it. The big boys went boom shortly after the decision was made to get rid of the remaining stores that nobody wanted to buy. Shame! The Books Etc Wake was a great night out last night and I was glad to hear that quite a few of the managers had new jobs lined up for the new year. Here are some ridiculous photographs:

Industry news magazine/website The Bookseller were apparently there too and I think they took their photo on a camera phone.

A break from the 2009 lists with some comics waffle, although these are also kind of Best Of in their own way:

Warren Ellis has been writing those X-Men geezers (and birds) this year so it’s been a slightly slow at times experience with loads of good ideas thrown up in the air and some of them stuck. The current story is a bit too similar to another one going on in the same fictional universe but it’s good stuff and looks pretty so all is forgiven.

Another anthology mutant title (Nation X) has a nice bit of Mike Allred art this month and some mutant urinal chat rule-breaking:

Meanwhile, over in Uncanny X-Men, Storm has gone all regal:

Psylocke is back and only slightly less convoluted than before:

DC Comics’ highlight of the year has to be the current run of Detective Comics with the Bat Woman tale as it is a work of bloody art that is crying out for an oversized hard cover collection:

James Robinson’s Justice League is taking shape nicely, using an interesting mix of characters. I am rather biased as I’m a massive fan of his work:

Gotta love them funny-coloured aliens!

Tomorrow will probably involve more lists of some sort.