Ten Highlights of 2009

I like it when the year rhymes with an adjective that I hope to describe the year with. 2008 was great, and I went around telling everyone oh nine would be fine. Now, history will take a pretty dim view of my ‘fine’ prediction, with the world’s financial axis spinning violently off course and more importantly, the Steve Show coming to an abrupt end.

I can’t think of an adjective that rhymes with ten, or eleven or twelve. Or thirteen, come to think of it. I’ll level with you and assert that the next one I have up my sleeve is that 2021 will be ‘fun’.

So, in no particular order then. Some highlights, mainly cultural, of 2009

10. Cricket. The Duckworth Lewis Method and their terrific album in praise of cricket. And England winning the Ashes in extraordinary and edge of seat style. And, I got good at cricket again, having not played since school, with The Thunderers. I even had a moment of cricketing and social pride that made me think I was living in colonial Kenya (I’m ironically pronouncing this Keen-ya) in 1925. On meeting the new chief theatre critic for the Evening Standard in a drinking club in London, we realised we had been at school together when we were 7, and he recalled that I’d taken a pretty memorable 9 for 14 against the villainous St Piran’s Under 11 team. My socks rolled up and down my legs with pride.

9. Barack Obama’s presidency. And Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat. The facebook group celebrating this hat was one I was proud to join. Although news on the group page has been a little slow recently.

8. Two films I wasn’t sure I was going to like as much as I did: The new Star Trek movie. And The Damned United. Both DVD essentials for 2010 if you haven’t seen them yet.

7. Great Britain. Yes, an odd choice- but this has been the first year I’ve ever been A Tourist in My Own Land (the potential title of the first book in my Bill Bryson style travel memoirs). Following my wife around the country as she embarked on a mammoth theatre tour meant that I saw and enjoyed the sights of, amongst others: Belfast, Glasgow, Torquay, Nottingham, Leeds, Northampton, Southend, Peterborough and Darlington. We live in a really crackin old country and I’m too London centred.

6. The Chap magazine goes from strength to strength. The shortlived but enormously popular Guide to Chivalry that I did on the radio show was closely allied to the Chappist way of life. The magazine itself is terrific, and an oasis of gentle gentlemanly humour and observation in a world where Society has become sick with some nameless malady of the soul. As an editorial stated in a previous issue:

“We have become the playthings of corporations intent on converting our world into a gargantuan shopping precinct. Pleasantness and civility are being discarded as the worthless ephemera of a bygone age – an age when men doffed their hats to the ladies, and small children could be counted upon to mind one’s Jack Russell while one took a mild and bitter in the local hostelry.

Instead, we live in a world where children are huge hooded creatures lurking in the shadows; the local hostelry has been taken over by a large chain that spe……es in chilled lager, whose principal function is to aggravate the nervous system. Needless to say, the Jack Russell is no longer there upon one’s return.

The Chap proposes to take a stand against this culture of vulgarity. We must show our children that the things worth fighting for are not the latest plastic plimsolls but a shiny pair of brogues. We must wean them off their alcopops and teach them how to mix martinis. Let the young not be ashamed of their flabby paunches, which they try to hide in their nylon tracksuits – we shall show them how a well-tailored suit can disguise the most ruined of bodies. Finally, let us capitalise on youth’s love of peculiar argot- only replace their pidgin ghetto-speak with fruity bons mots and dry witticisms.

It is time for Chaps and Chapettes from all walks of life to stand up and be counted. But fear not, ye languid and ye plain idle: ours is a revolution based not on getting up early and exerting oneself – but a revolution that can be achieved by a single raised eyebrow over a monocle; the ordering of a glass of port in All Bar One; the wearing of a particularly fetching cardigan upon a visit to one’s bookmaker. In other words: a revolution of panache. We shall bewilder the masses with seams in our trousers that could cut paper, trilbies angled so rakishly that traffic comes to a standstill; and by refusing the bland, watery substances that are foisted upon us by faceless corporations, we shall bring the establishment to its knees, begging for sartorial advice and a nip from our hip flasks.”

And the ‘Am I a Chap?’ section is unmissable.

5 Spitalfields market in East London I ran a stall here for a while in the early ‘noughties’ (won’t miss that come the 2020s. But what are we going to call the next ten years? The ‘teens’? I hope not…) and it was permanently threatened with closure, the roof leaked and it was Freezing Cold. Now it’s a sprawling mass of stalls, it’s heated, there are loos and cashpoints (but just those weird charging ones, which are the only ones around when you really need one), and, aside from the fact that about 2 in 5 of the stalls are currently selling either cupcakes or charm necklaces, it’s really really good. And the variety of cooked food is the best I’ve seen- I’ll say it- anywhere in the world. Anything you could want.

4 My favourite author is William Boyd. Any Human Heart is a book I frequently go back to. And Ordinary Thunderstorms, which came out this year, is really good.

3 The fact that someone could be bothered to collect all the best one liners from The Edinburgh Festival and actually credited the comics that wrote them.
1) Dan Antopolski – “Hedgehogs – why can’t they just share the hedge?
2) Paddy Lennox – “I was watching the London Marathon and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: ‘This could be interesting.’”
3) Sarah Millican – “I had my boobs measured and bought a new bra. Now I call them Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes because they’re up where they belong.”
4) Zoe Lyons – “I went on a girl’s night out recently. The invitation said ‘dress to kill.’ I went as Rose West.”
5) Jack Whitehall – “I’m sure wherever my dad is; he’s looking down on us. He’s not dead, just very condescending.”
6) Adam Hills – “Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you’re going to get it, but it’s going to be rough.”
7) Marcus Brigstocke – “To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it!”
8 ) Rhod Gilbert – “A spa hotel? It’s like a normal hotel, only in reception there’s a picture of a pebble”.
9) Dan Antopolski – “I’ve been reading the news about there being a civil war in Madagascar. Well, I’ve seen it six times and there isn’t.”
10) Simon Brodkin (as Lee Nelson) – “I started so many fights at my school – I had that attention-deficit disorder. So I didn’t finish a lot of them.”

2. The return of The Thick Of It on BBC2. A particularly strong turn by a spit and cough straight man in Episode 6 is worth taking a look at. I’m surprised they cut my favourite insult from the series. As it was never broadcast, Steve Show posse readers can enjoy an exclusive here: Malcolm: ‘You do that again, Ollie, and I’ll tear off your head, plant a palm tree in your neck, and fuck you tenderly in its shade’. (c) A. Iannucci.

1. Adam and Joe on 6Music are – if not the best thing of the whole year- a pretty good way to end the list. Their podcast and show – and the fact that George Lamb has been booted to the weekend and Lauren Laverne given the weekday slot- means our erstwhile employer is still a pretty good radio station.