That Was The Year That Was: 2025

Incredibly, this is the fifteenth time I've recapped a year like this (for completists, here are the others). Fifteen times, blimey ... God alone knows what we are both still doing here...

But since we are hanging around, still, I'll crack on with this nonsense, whilst you gaze in wonderment at just how staid, parochial and predictable I am.

It'll keep us both busy, if nothing else. Having said that, I've written noticeably less than in years gone by, so I won't keep you for long - we can all be thankful for that.

Best album

Well, there have been a couple of stand-outs for me this year: the unexpected joy of More by Pulp, and Antidepressants by Suede, who continue to surprise us all with the excellence of their third age.

Also noteworthy are Bowerbirds and Blue Things by Jetstream Pony and Find El Dorado by Paul Weller, the latter proving what a great reinterpreter he has always been.

Best song

Many of the songs I've heard for the first time this year are old, just new to me. But of 2025 releases, I've been impressed by Masquerade by Cardinals, Bonnet of Pins by Matt Berninger and Disintegrate by Suede. Oh, and a late dive for the tape was made by The Light Won't Shine Forever by Aussie band Floodlights. The nod, though, goes to Apple Green UFO by Andy Bell, which makes me feel about 30 years younger than I am. Who could ask for more? Here's the full length version to luxuriate in...

Best gig

As good as the usual suspects (The Smyths, From The Jam, The Wedding Present) have all been, and as good a night out as Roger Daltrey (morphing into Warwick Davis) was, the nod here, unsurprisingly, goes to the Gene reunion show at the Hammersmith Apollo in October. Literally everything I could ever want from a gig.

Best book

Like the song category, this has been tricky because most of what I've read for the first time this year has been old: Cider with Roadies by Stuart Maconie was very enjoyable, but was published in 2005. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, though an astonishing work of memoir, is even older (1999). But of course I can always rely on Stephen King - Never Flinch was not only published this year but also dependably enjoyable, even if not his best work.

Best film

The year was bookended by stand-outs: Dylan-goes-electric biopic A Complete Unknown at one end and Edgar Wright's ever-so-slightly-disappointing take on vintage King (as Bachman) The Running Man at the other. In between, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey deserves a special mention, for really making me think, whilst Brad's F1 and Tom's Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning both delivered predictable thrills without reinventing cinema. I must also mention Nina Conti's brilliant surreal simian road movie, Sunlight. Oh, and as a dad, it was lovely to share movie nostalgia with Amusements Minor with the live-action remake of How To Train Your Dragon.

Best theatre

I haven't seen much on stage this year. Does an NT Live cinema screening of Dr Strangelove count? Steve Coogan was excellent in four roles. Also noteworthy was the 30th anniversary on-stage gathering, for performance and anecdotes, of The Fast Show ensemble, minus the late Caroline Aherne. Aren't end-of-year round-ups brilliant?! Oh, and I finally got to see the Jon Ronson: Psychopath Night stage show. Entertaining and thought-provoking stuff.

Best television

I feel like I must have forgotten something, because this reads like a really slow year for TV. Finally got Wednesday 2 on Netflix, which was good but inevitably not as good as the first series, despite a liberal sprinkling of Joanna Lumley. Like the rest of the nation, Amusements Towers got into Celebrity Traitors, despite never having watched a single moment of the regular, non-celebrity version. Apologies if there's a theme developing, but Celebrity Race Across The World also hits the spot in our house. And as I write this, we're half way through Stranger Things 5, so far living up to the almost impossible levels of expectation.

Best sport

I enjoyed Liverpool FC winning the Premier League, even if it felt anticlimatic. Just as well, because they've blown up a bit this season. Other notables included Iga Świątek at Wimbledon and Georgia Hunter Bell at the World Athletics Championships (both awesome), and the Lionesses at the UEFA Women's Euros.

Person of the year

Well, it's not a person but a thing: the NHS. Fourteen years of Tory underinvestment have left it on its knees and, as a result, it's pretty far from perfect these days. Yet still it goes on, against the odds, delivering care and services to our sick and injured. It's easy to point out when things go wrong in the NHS, and to be frustrated by bureaucracy and poor communication... but it gets so much right, still, even in the most trying of circumstances. We'll miss it when it's gone, you know.

Tool of the year

Trump again, obviously. Not content with sending troops into US cities for paper-thin, politically motivated reasons, claiming to end wars that have not ended, failing to touch the sides of what's going on in Ukraine, bulldozing bits of the White House to make way for a huge/vulgar ballroom (compensating much?), not sending anyone of any status or significance to COP 30, doing anything to divert attention from the Epstein files, pardoning people he doesn't even know, expressing interest in somehow running for a third term, presiding over the longest shutdown in US political history, finally promising to release those Epstein files and then not, and so much more besides... he's ended the year by going after the BBC and giving himself a sports day peace prize medal at the World Cup draw. That's a sequence of words I never conceived would be necessary or even feasible to write. What a desperate, sad, insecure, delusional little man he is ... and/or a colossal orange prick.

I hope that was worth it but know, deep down, that it wasn't. Reader: how was 2025 for you?

That Was The Year That Was: 2018

This is the eighth time I've recapped a year like this (for completists, here are the others), but this time it's going to be brief - just winners, no runners-up. Why? I'm tired, and this crap doesn't write itself. Plus, you know, I'm no influencer and nobody really gives a monkeys about what I think. Yes, that makes this whole post an exercise in vanity ... but exercise is good for you, right?

Best album

I've bought very few new albums this year but, of the few I have, True Meanings by Paul Weller is worth a mention. As he has throughout his career, the Modfather has dared to do different, and it works. A classic? No. But rewarding of repeated listens? Yes.

Best song

Hi Hello by Johnny Marr, and not just because it evokes his old band. But the fact that it does is no bad thing.

Best gig

Sorry but it was Morrissey at the Royal Albert Hall. I wrote about it at the time. Been a good year for gigs.

Best book

Best I've read this year? The Knot by Mark Watson. Best I've read that was published this year? The Outsider by Stephen King. Best I've been involved with this year? The Petrified World and other tales, edited by yours truly.

Best film

I haven't been to the cinema as often as I might like but, even if I had, I think Ghost Stories would still have been my film of the year. Genuine chills and some great performances, especially from Paul Whitehouse. Jeune Femme was also noteworthy.

Best television

The most fiercely contended category. The award goes to Killing Eve, for being inventive, original, compelling and brilliantly soundtracked - a must-see! The protagonists are wonderfully played by Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer too.

Best comedy

I was lucky enough to catch Dave Gorman's new show, With Great Powerpoint Comes Great Responsibilitypoint, and it made me laugh out loud more than anything else, all year. The ticket price was worth it for the giraffe joke alone.

Best theatre

A bit of a cheat here, as it really deserves an honourable mention in the comedy category, but David Baddiel's My Family: Not The Sitcom deserves all the plaudits it gets. Funny, yes, but emotional too, and laudably honest. Can't wait for the Trolls show he's working up to tour, hopefully in 2019.

And that's it for this year. Yes, I know, that's fewer categories than in year's gone by. Sorry. Am time-poor and all out of words.

Latitude 2018 - delicious

It's ten years since I first went to the Latitude Festival, three years since I last went. I've changed a lot in that period, and so has Latitude. I went again this year, just for a day on Sunday. For the first time, my choice of ticket was driven by the undercard, rather than the headliner. How did I get on, in the scorched dust bowl of Henham Park, you might wonder? With the festival app that was so buggy and crash-happy that I forked out a tenner for the programme book instead? Well here, in the manner of my old festival diaries, is what I got up to. All photos can be embiggened with a click.

Sunday:

• Dylan Moran : Comedy stage. I haven't seen Dylan live before, so I don't know if the whole "doesn't have an act" schtick is an act or, you know, the act, but it doesn't matter because the whole seemingly disjointed, free-associative delivery really works. Moran riffed on the Internet, technology, relationships, gender, giving up alcohol and a whole lot more. Struck a chord.
• 
  Richard Ayoade in conversation with Mark Kermode : Film and Television arena. I don't mind Kermode, and am a huge fan of Ayoade, so was not going to miss this, even though this was the hottest, most crowded tent I was in the whole festival, so much so that there was a mild rebellion in the audience when the organisers tried to cram even more people in. Mark and Richard discussed the genre classic Roadhouse, Richard's book The Grip Of Film, his film adaptations of Submarine and The Double, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, even The IT Crowd, before opening up for an audience Q&A. This over-ran, and nobody minded in the least.
• 
  Hannah Peel : BBC Music stage. A cool, breezy tent after the heat of the previous session, but the relaxed atmosphere was spoiled a little by the volume. I don't want to sound like Huey Lewis in Back To The Future but it was just too darned loud, and I put my gig-plugs in. I know, I know. Hannah reaches for a dreamy, ethereal sound, surrounded by a bank of keyboards, with just a drummer to fill out the sound. Name-checking Paul Buchanan and The Blue Nile might give a hint of Hannah's style, but her most effective moment was a cover of Tainted Love accompanied only by a hand-wound music box, playing from a punched card, even if she struggled to hear this over the thump of the main stage. And then, to prove her many talents, Hannah whipped out a violin for her closing track.
• 
  Reasons to be Cheerful podcast live, with Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband : The Speakeasy. After a relaxed and much needed cup of tea and slice of cake from the Greenpeace tent, it was off to see Geoff and Ed attempt to record a live podcast in what used to be called the Literature Arena. Geoff and Ed were beset by technical problems at first, especially with the microphones - Ed tried to compensate for this by geeing the crowd up at every opportunity. But once everything settled down, they brought out their first guest, a scientist called Simon (sorry, I didn't make a note of his surname) to talk about the Anthropocene. Sadly, this was the cue for some in the crowd to bail out. And when Simon pointed out that, because of climate change, the recent heatwave will be common and persistent by 2050, a sunburnt couple in front of me turned to give each other a gurning thumbs-up. This is what we're up against. And the disconcerting facts came thick and fast after that - a estimated three trillion trees have been lost during man's time on the planet; we have produced enough concrete to cover the entire Earth in a layer 2mm thick, and enough plastic to clingfilm the planet. I don't know about reasons to be cheerful, but there were certainly reasons to be thoughtful. As for Ed Miliband ... well, I went to this to see what he was like when he was just being himself, not scripted, not media-schooled, not spun. And you know what? He seems a bit more engaging, more natural, more real. I think this version of Ed would attract more votes than the one that was wheeled out against Cameron.
• 
  Sleeper : the Obelisk Arena (main stage). For the first time, my choice of which day to attend Latitude was driven, not by the headliner, but by an act lower on the bill because yes, I was very keen to see the reformed and re-energised Sleeper. Like a million other indie boys, I was a little bit in love with Louise Wener back in the mid 90s, and you never forget your first loves, do you? And she and her Sleeperblokes (original guitarist and drummer, Jon and Andy, and new bassist Kieron [ex-Prodigy touring band], plus supplementary guitarist, saxophonist and keyboards) did not disappoint. There were most of the hits from back in the day (Delicious, What Do I Do Now?, Nice Guy Eddie, Inbetweener, Sale Of The Century, and more) plus some interesting covers: a mix of Blondie's Atomic and Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart was particularly ambitious, but well executed. Feeling Peaky seguéd into Lou Reed's Satellite Of Love nicely too, a song that really suits Louise's voice. And yes, I guess I'm still a little bit in love with Louise. Dressed in her Super Her t-shirt, she thought she should tell us, as this was World Cup final day, that she was born on the day England won the World Cup. So yes, she's 52. I'm happy to report that she still bounces the same on stage, though maybe not quite so high. Anyway. Sleeper are recording a new album, funded through PledgeMusic - you can and should back them here.
• Grace Savage : The Speakeasy. After a quick bite to eat, I made my way back to The Speakeasy and, by virtue of them running late, caught the tail end of Grace Savage. Apparently she has been British beatbox champion four times but, on this evidence, there is more to her than that. She sings original compositions which, although not my cup of tea, were very listenable. Especially since I was sat down, with an actual cup of tea. She also engaged brilliantly with the audience, and had the yoof dancing at the front, no mean achievement in what is basically the book tent. One to watch, I would say, especially if I was 35 years younger.
• Adam Kay - This Is Going To Hurt : The Speakeasy. It was Adam that I actually came to the Speakeasy to see. Adam was an obs & gynae ("parts and labour") doctor in a large hospital, before a series of events that I won't describe (no spoilers) led him to quit. He has since turned his old reflective learning log into a best-selling book, that shines a light both comedic and tragic on the state of acute care in the NHS, and the pressures on junior doctors. Adam read excerpts from the book, interspersed with comedy medical songs - well-known tunes to which Adam has put funny, medical lyrics. This works well, and he is clearly a talented pianist, if not a great singer. He ended with reading the last entry from that reflective learning log which recounts the tipping point that caused him to walk away, at which point the laughs stopped and Adam began an impassioned defence of junior doctors, and a scathing attack on the politicians who seek to destroy the NHS. This got the biggest cheer of all. I bought his book afterwards, got it signed and shook his hand.
• 
  Wolf Alice : the Obelisk Arena (main stage). Hanging on to meet Adam Kay made me late for Wolf Alice, so they were well into their stride when I arrived. And man, were they loud! The bass reached inside my chest and reaarranged some organs! Okay, so my hearing is going to hell in a hand-basket, but the subterranean bass emanating from Wolf Alice made me fear for the hearing of the children further forward than me, with no ear-defenders. But anyway. Ellie Rowsell made for an engaging front-woman in her floaty white damsel dress and loosely laced Doc's. The Jumbotrons at either side of the stage also revealed that Ellie was wearing a claddagh ring, but I couldn't remember whether the way she was wearing it meant she was in a relationship or looking for one. Either way, she was on fire, sitting on the edge of the stage for a quieter number, wigging out with the rest of the band for Giant Peach, in this, their first appearance on the main stage having debuted at Latitude five years earlier. Guitarist Joff Oddie worked his way through a series of seemingly identical Fender Jaguars, one of which he throttled rather than played. As Giant Peach faded out into a wall of looping feedback and blue lights, Rowsell picked up sweary bassist Theo Ellis and spun him around - Wolf Alice's work was done. Awesome.
• 
  Gabrielle Aplin : BBC Music stage. I arrived at the second stage just in time to see Aplin perform her breakout track, the former Christmas ad-soundtracking cover of Frankie's The Power Of Love. It was an undeniably powerful performance, undiminished by familiarity, with Gabrielle spotlit from above. Meaning no disrespect to her more than capable band, this was a hard act to follow - for my money, Aplin is better suited to stripped back, solo songs rather than those with the full band treatment. This was well evidenced on set closer Fool's Love - a perfectly adequate track but it felt like Aplin was stretching, whereas her interpretation of others' songs seemed more relaxed.
• Rob Kemp - The Elvis Dead : The Speakeasy. Headliners Alt-J weren't ever going to do it for me. I know. I'm an old man, with parochial music taste - you've got me, well done. Anyway, that's how I came to be in The Speakeasy for the end of my day at Latitude, watching comedian Rob Kemp dramatise scenes from The Evil Dead 2, by singing suitably lyric-changed versions of Elvis songs as clips from the movie played on a screen behind him. So "Devil In Disguise" became "Dead Eye In Disguise", and so on. You get the idea. It might sound odd, but it really works, and was very funny. A fine end to a hot, tiring day.

And that was that. Because I didn't stay for every note of the headliner, for once I had no problem getting out of the car-park and was home at a decent time. So what did I make of Latitude 2018? Is it still essential festival fare? Well... yes. I think so. It's a wonderful event, and the multi-media format, embracing books, film, theatre and more, as well as music, makes it stand out. Would I have liked a headliner that I felt compelled to see? Yes, of course. And would I have liked my hearing to be in better shape, to enjoy the louder bands without gig plugs? Again, of course. But I chose a Sunday ticket to see Sleeper, and they exceeded all expectations. I was also keen to get to know Wolf Alice better, and was bowled over by their performance. The bottom line is this - there is something for everyone, every day, at Latitude. It is impossible not to enjoy yourself there.

I'll leave you with a video or three.

That Was The Year That Was: 2017

You know the drill by now - after all, this is the seventh time I've recapped a year like this (for completists, here's 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011), and by doing so demonstrate just how bloody parochial I've become. I almost didn't bother this year, as I haven't bought many albums or been to many gigs, and I've read even fewer new books, but it's been a good year for television, again, so I'll give it a go and see what happens. You in?

Best album

Low In High School by Morrissey - this has been on permanent rotation in my car since it came out. As musically unpredictable and lyrically extrospective as anything he's ever released.

Honourable mentions: A Kind Revolution by Paul Weller; George Best 30 by The Wedding Present; Welcome, Stranger! by The Blue Aeroplanes; and, filling out the re-issues and anniversary release market that is so big these days, the frankly astounding The Queen Is Dead remastered boxset by The Smiths and the peerless OK Computer OKNOTOK by Radiohead.

Best song

Spent The Day In Bed by Morrissey is the song that has been most sung/whistled/hummed at New Amusements Towers. It's not his finest work, but it has that hooky intro.

Honourable mentions: Rosie Lies by The Holiday Crowd (yes, they do sound a bit Smithsy); Everything Now by Arcade Fire, even if (or maybe, because) it sounds like a lost Simple Minds track from when they were good; and a late entry, Holy Mountain by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.

Best gig

The Wedding Present performing George Best, in its entirety, at a low-key, intimate venue in Dover. A frantic burn through of songs that have been so important to me for 30 years. Exemplary company, as ever, from The Man Of Cheese in what is fast becoming our annual pilgrimage to Gedge.

Honourable mentions: I was so excited to see The Vapors live, a band that have been important to me even longer than The Wedding Present; The Blue Aeroplanes were also ace, back in January.

Best book

I have read very little new fiction in 2017. Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King wasn't bad. It is certainly very timely, with its subtext of how shitty men are to women.

Honourable mentions: the non-fiction Wedding Present coffee table book Sometimes These Words Just Don't Have To Be Said (and not just because I was a contributor).

Best film

In which I blow my aficionado credentials out of the water. The film I most enjoyed all year was Paddington 2, a joyful slice of movie-making that manages to be both innocent and knowing at the same time. Kids scream with laughter, parents get lumps in their throats or something in their eye... and Hugh Grant has a whale of a time. I genuinely came out of the cinema thinking it was a near-perfect film.

Honourable mentions: until Paddington 2 I thought the subtle brilliance of A Ghost Story had this category sewn up; England Is Mine was flawed but fascinating; Blade Runner 2049 had a lot to live up to, but mostly pulled it off; ditto Trainspotting 2.

Best television

Another fiercely contended category. The award goes to Detectorists, for providing a gentle blend of comedy, drama, and real life pathos. If you still haven't got on this, series 3 is currently iPlayer-able. Hurry!

Honourable mentions: another good year for TV (it's the new film, don't you know?). Inside Number 9, right back at the start of the year, was a dark gem; the BBC's historical three-parter Gunpowder was gripping and educational; Chris Packham's documentary Asperger's and Me was worth an hour of anyone's time; and Lego Masters on Channel 4 proved that it is possible for me to remain interested in a competitive reality talent show format.

Best comedy

The new Mitchell and Webb vehicle Back, on Channel 4, made me laugh out loud more than anything else, all year. A little near the knuckle sometimes, but then what else would you expect? Genius dialogue too.

Honourable mentions: last year's winner, Modern Life Is Goodish continues to be brilliant; Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney continued to highlight their all-too-real black comedy in Catastrophe; in a similar vein, Motherland from the Beeb has also impressed; live, Mark Thomas's Show That Gambles On The Future was excellent, and with bonus pathos too.

Best theatre

Not seen much in the way of live theatre this year, so Slava's Snow Show wins, almost by default. Think what would happen if Andy Kaufman was an East European clown, putting on a Christmas show, and you're in the right ballpark.

Honourable mentions: my sister had a spare ticket to see 42nd Street in the West End, so I stepped in as her +1. It's not my bag at all, but I can appreciate a well put together show, and my sister enjoyed herself, so...

Best blogger

Shock result! For the first time in the history of this category, Andrew Collins doesn't win! No, my blogger of the year is perennial runner-up My Top Ten from Rol, who has really upped his game this year, not least with his Saturday Snapshots series. And what really got Rol over the line was this excellent post about Morrissey - cogent, reasoned and massively readable. Everything a good blog should be.

Honourable mentions: blogging is dying art - a blog is to Twitter as cassettes are to MP3s, sadly. Perma-winner Andrew Collins is still brilliant, with music blog Circles Of Life, his paean to British cinema Digging Your Screen and the excellent "other" blog, Never Knowingly Underwhelmed - he's just been much less active in 2017 than in previous years; The (New) Vinyl Villain from JC continues to be a blogging inspiration; and Sun Dried Sparrows from C provides excellent autobiography and terrific period detail in her blog. Also, if there was an award for blog commenting, C would scoop that.

Person of the year

John Oliver, who not only continues to prove how to make it big in America without becoming an arse, he also continues to tell it like it is about Trump (here's a great example... and another... and another...), and most admirable of all, took Dustin Hoffman to task about alleged past sexual harassment. It wasn't on his show, it wasn't professionally filmed, there was a small audience, and Hoffman was one of several famous faces making up a panel to commemorate a 20-year old film. There was no reason for Oliver to confront Hoffman... but he did it anyway, because he felt it was the right thing to do. Really, watch it if you haven't already.

Honourable mentions: Elon Musk, for driving affordable space travel forward, disrupting received wisdom about missions to Mars, turning the production of decent electric cars into a race, delivering battery tech solutions to real-world problems... forget the slightly cringey hype of the Elon fanboys and concentrate on what he is achieving; and Sir David Attenborough who, on top of everything else he continues to achieve, presided over episode seven of Blue Planet II, the most must-watch episode of another astounding series.

Tool of the year

Trump, of course. How a man with such a tiny dick (according to Melania) can be such a massive cock continues to boggle the mind, and fuck up the world.

Honourable mentions: Boris, Farage, all the usual suspects ... what a depressing year 2017 has been.

And that's it. The year is nearly over, thank Christ. At least we have all got used to weekly celebrity deaths this year. Even so, there's been a lot in 2017 to loathe... but what have you loved?

Footnote: yes, I consciously deferred this post until it was 17.12.17 12.17 - you should pity me, really...

You'll like this... not a lot, but...

Saw this guy doing close-up magic at an event last weekend. All I can say is, even though cynical me was looking for the tricks and the slight of hand throughout, I couldn't pick any. I know a lot of this is prop-based, and that there is slight of hand going on, plus distraction techniques, but even so... this is a testament, not to any magical powers, but to the power of practice.

That Was The Year That Was: 2016

It's mid-December and so, with the weary inevitably of a celebrity death, it must be time for a recap of what's been good this year. Not much, I hear you say.

This is the sixth time I've recapped a year like this (for completists, here's 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011) and, taken together, all these reviews really do is demonstrate how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Only worse, this year. Still... onwards.

Best album

Going Going by The Wedding Present - much respect is due to the right honourable David Gedge who, even after plying his jangly guitar-based indie trade for 30+ years, still wants to try new things. The whole album is a joy, and the first four tracks are as innovative as anything you'll have heard all year.

Honourable mentions: hotly contested this year, with Everything At Once by Travis, A Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead, Night Thoughts by Suede, The Bride by Bat For Lashes and Head Carrier by Pixies all being worthy of repeated plays.

Best song

Idlewild by Travis featuring Josephine Oniyama - this is a seductive earworm of a song, and reminds me a bit of various Morrissey duets (step forward Siouxsie Sioux, Chrissie Hynde, Nancy Sinatra). I could listen to this over and over and over.

Honourable mentions: Burn The Witch by Radiohead, which very nearly took top spot; the gut wrench of Dollar Days by David Bowie.

Best gig

Another win for The Wedding Present with their low-key, intimate gig at The Royal Function Rooms (a misleadingly grand name if ever there was one) in Rochester. A blistering, up-close and personal set, with Mr Gedge or especially fine form. Nice to chat with him before the gig too, in particular about the track Secretary, and to get my Going Going lyric book signed. All this, topped off with exemplary company as ever from The Man Of Cheese made this the gig experience of the year for me.

Honourable mentions: having said that, the sheer feeling of something special I got from watching Paul Simon at the Royal Albert Hall made that evening a very close second; Travis were terrific value, as always; Ben Watt with Bernard Butler was also very good (top tip: you should always take any opportunity you can to see Bernard play guitar up close).

Best book

For the seductive prose and remorseless sense of the uncanny, this year's nod goes to Slade House by David Mitchell. It's one of those that you want to race through, but don't want to end and, as a wannabe author myself, something I wish I had written.

Honourable mentions: a bit of a cheat here because it was published in 2005 but I got around to reading In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murukami and it blew me away; Mark Kilner's run of short story excellence continued with his third collection, Process Of Elimination; Adrian J Walker's End Of The World Running Club also kept the pages turning; non-fiction wise, I also very much enjoyed That's Entertainment: My Life in the Jam by Rick Buckler, despite the lack of an index and the need for a better editor; oh, and another old book, The Promise Of Happiness by Justin Cartwright, is worth a look.

Best film

A difficult category, mainly because I haven't been to the cinema as much as I'd like this year, but the nod goes to The Witch, partly for Anya Taylor-Joy's standout performance, partly for the superb evocation of time and place, partly for creeping out the entire cinema and partly for Ralph Ineson ensuring we'll never think of him as Finchy from The Office again.

Honourable mentions: this year has been all about films I wanted to see but didn't get around to (I, Daniel Blake and Nocturnal Animals, take a bow) but at least Room adapted well to the big screen; the Q&A afterwards didn't add much (aside from the odd cheap laugh) but Louis Theroux's My Scientology Movie was quite an accomplishment, especially considering the challenges faced making it.

Best television

Another fiercely contended category. The award goes to series three of Line Of Duty, for keeping me on a knife-edge throughout, and adding the phrase "urgent exit required" to my permanent pop-culture lexicography.

Honourable mentions: another good year for TV (it's the new film, don't you know?), so there are lots. Deutschland '83 very nearly scooped the top prize; series two of the BBC's Happy Valley lived up to its predecessor; Channel 4's National Treasure, in which not one of the excellent cast put so much as a foot wrong; and for documentaries, Louis Theroux's Drinking To Oblivion, shocking and heart-breaking in equal measure; I've enjoyed the second series of Humans, although it's hard to see how it will end. Oh, and series two of The Missing would doubtless have featured, except I haven't got around to watching any of it yet.

Best comedy

Last year's winner, Modern Life Is Goodish, retains its title, as Dave Gorman continues to explore the ridiculousness of our 21st Century, post-truth, post-Europe, post-everything world.

Honourable mentions: I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue on Radio 4, not least because Jack Dee seems to have really found his feet as host. Never fails to raise a smile.

Best theatre

Rodrigo Pardo's Flat, a show about one man in his apartment, might not sound too inspiring. But stage that show high up on the side of a building, using wirework for the actor to move around (and shift your perspective), and it turns into something truly memorable.

Honourable mentions: this might sound sappy but I don't care - I took the family to see The Lion King at the Lyceum. We had amazing seats, became totally immersed and it all got a bit emotional. Another theatrical moment I will not forget.

Best blogger

Retaining his title for the fourth consecutive year is Andrew Collins, whose Telly Addict video blog, ditched by The (foolish) Guardian but rehoused by UKTV, is twelve minutes a week of essential viewing. It should be on actual TV, if you ask me. On top of this, Andrew also writes, albeit very sporadically, the music blog Circles Of Life, in which he seeks to catalogue his favourite 143 songs of all time. Oh, and the excellent "other" blog, Never Knowingly Underwhelmed. Andrew is, once more, my blogger of the year.

Honourable mentions: blogging is dying art - a blog is to Twitter as vinyl is to MP3s, sadly. There's still some good stuff out there, not least Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop from Lee; The (New) Vinyl Villain from JC; My Top Ten from Rol; and a new entry, A History Of Dubious Taste from Jez.

Man of the year

Irish senator Aodhán Ó Riordáin, whose speech in reaction to Trump's election success neatly articulated what so many people were feeling. And he stood up and said it in a front-line political setting, not over a pint in the pub. What was it he said now? "Trump is a fascist and I’m embarrassed by the Government’s response." Or something like that, anyway. Good man, Aodhán; the world could do with a few more politicians like you.

Honourable mentions: in a year of so much misery, it's hard not to admit that Ed Balls has had a good twelve months. Okay, so he's not an MP (for now) but his book has done very well, and he's the new chairman of the football club he loves. Oh, and what's that, you say? Dancing?

Woman of the year

Abigail Bamber, who epitomises everything great about the NHS, in demonstrating that lifesavers don't have days off. In a year of awful news, click her name for a positive, life-affirming story, to whit: "most nurses go into nursing because it is a vocation - not a job."

Honourable mentions: Hillary Clinton, naturally. She fought the good fight, kept out of the gutter however often her opponent tried to drag her down to his level and, in the end, polled more votes than any male candidate in US election history. And when, soul-crushingly (for her and basically the whole world), she still lost what she must surely have felt her whole life had been leading up to, she managed to do so with dignity. #ImStillWithHer

Tool of the year

Everything that is wrong with contemporary politics, 21st Century hate crime and the normalisation of extreme views is summed up by Breitbart-peddling Milo Yiannopoulos. Ye gods. What an utter tool, the sort that only a mother could love. As a nation, we should be ashamed to have produced Milo. And what a pity that sixth formers from his old school were prevented from debating with him - they'd have given him a damn good grilling.

Honourable mentions: Trump, Farage, all the usual suspects ... what a depressing year 2016 has been.

And that's it. The year is nearly over, thank goodness. There's been a lot in to to loathe... but what have you loved?

That was the year that was: 2015

It's mid-December and so, with the weary inevitably of a crass Trumpism or an X-Factor Christmas single, it must be time for a recap of what's been good this year. NAOTY 2015, or Just Another Subjective Award 2015, if you prefer. This is the fifth time I've recapped a year like this (for completists, here's 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011) and, taken together, all these reviews really do is demonstrate just how parochial my tastes are (Michelle, in the unlikely event that you're reading this, you get more right about that every year). Let's press on.

Best album

"A Comfortable Man" by Cathal Smyth - a quiet album of bittersweet melancholia from the Nutty Boy formerly known as Chas Smash. Truly exceptional, and an album that would currently sit in my "top ten releases of the 21st Century" should I ever compile such a list. You can read my full review here.

Honourable mentions: "Magic Whip" by Blur, which is far, far better than anyone had any right to expect; "My Love Is Cool" by Wolf Alice; "Chasing Yesterday" by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.

Best song

"I Broadcast" by Blur - however much I love having new Blur material, the songs I like best are those that sound most like Modern Life Blur, so this and "Lonesome Street" were vying for the nod here.

Honourable mentions: "Are The Children Happy?" by Cathal Smyth, the most gut-wrenching song about divorce you will hear; the audacious "I Can Change" by Brandon Flowers.

Best gig

The Who at Hyde Park, with a cracking Coombes/Marr/Weller undercard. I mentioned it in passing at the time.

Honourable mentions: It's been another quiet year, gig-wise, but Madness was special, and felt like a homecoming, musically and literally, as were From The Jam, touring the 35th anniversary of "Sound Affects"; Belle and Sebastian were also very good, upbeat and interactive.

Best book

Sorry to be so predictable but it's "The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams", the latest collection of short fiction from Stephen King. For someone who's known for writing such long novels (too long, some would say), I love that some of King's very darkest thoughts emerge in short form. Very hard to put down, this kept me up way past my bed time...

Honourable mentions: a bit of a cheat here because I haven't read it all yet but "Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink" by Elvis Costello looks to be remarkable; having been very impressed with Paula Hawkins at the Write On Kew literary festival, I was also very impressed with her novel, "The Girl On The Train"; "Elizabeth Is Missing" by Emma Healey is also excellent.

Best film

A difficult category, because nothing has really blown me away this year, but the nod goes to "Wild", for Reece Witherspoon's portrayal of Cheryl Strayed's extreme rehab (and because Witherspoon is so undervalued).

Honourable mentions: at the start of the year, I espoused the various virtues of "Birdman", "The Theory Of Everything" and "Paddington", all of which are good in different ways; "It Follows" delivered real chills; there will moments of surreal beauty in "The Falling"; talking surreal, I loved the invention of "The Lobster" (which also scored points for Rachel Weisz-ness); and "Cobain: Montage Of Heck" was a decent, if ultimately flawed, documentary.

Best television

As last year, the most fiercely contended category. The award goes to "Humans", Channel 4's re-imagining of the Swedish near-future "what if?" William Hurt and Katherine Parkinson were both exceptional, and I got a bit enamoured of Gemma Chan too.

Honourable mentions: yet another good year for TV (it's the new film, don't you know?), so there are lots. The BBC's "River" deserves a nod for blending conventional crime drama with a Scandi twist (the lead man) and Sixth Sense-style seeing of a dead person; series two of "Fargo" is sublime, with nothing else like it on right now; talking of second series, there was a welcome return for, er, "The Returned"; the Beeb's adaptation of Sadie Jones's "Outcast" was worth a look; series two of "Inside Number 9" slipped under a lot of people's radar, but was brilliant; and although Danny Baker can be a bit of a Marmite figure, "Cradle To Grave" was, for my money, enjoyable viewing, TV as comfort food.

Best comedy

Last year's runner-up, "Modern Life Is Goodish", in which Dave Gorman continues to show his working as he goes along, scoops this year's entirely subjective award. Modern life is, actually, pretty ridiculous in many ways... but there's much fun to be had in exploring that ridiculousness.

Honourable mentions: Nina Conti and Pippa Evans, both of whom I saw in a not-ideal festival setting, but both of whom were engaging and properly funny.

Best theatre

"Elvis Costello in conversation with Nick Hornby" might not count as proper theatre, but it took place in one, so... Declan P. MacManus was everything you'd hope, ran his own slideshow from a tablet and concluded the Q&A with a three-song unaccompanied acoustic set of Beyond Belief, Indoor Fireworks and Share Your Love With Me. And I met him at the after-show book signing too. What a night.

Honourable mentions: I'm struggling a bit here, because once again I haven't seen as much on stage this year as I would have liked, but poet Eddie Argos was very good at Latitude, doing his "how to make it in a band" schtick in the Poetry Tent.

Best blogger

Retaining his title for the third consecutive year is Andrew Collins, whose "Telly Addict" video blog for The Guardian is twelve minutes a week of essential viewing. On top of this, Andrew also writes, albeit sporadically, the music blog "Circles Of Life", in which he seeks to catalogue his favourite 143 songs of all time. Oh, and the excellent "other" blog, "Never Knowingly Underwhelmed". Andrew is, once more, my blogger of the year.

Honourable mentions: blogging seems to be a dying art, sadly, but there's still some good stuff out there, not least "Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop" from Lee; "The (New) Vinyl Villain" from JC; "My Top Ten" from Rol; and "Cultural Snow" from Tim.

Man of the year

Jon Snow - no, not that one. The mainstay of Channel 4 news for more than a quarter of a century continues to conduct incisive, ego-puncturing interviews (IDS, Gove and Osborne have all been subject to Jon's scrutiny), and there can't be many other broadcasters in their late sixties prepared to get stoned on camera for research and journalistic purposes. We'll miss him when he retires, and British news reporting will be a far, far poorer place.

Honourable mentions: whether you agree with him or not (and for the record, I don't think I do), it was hard not to be impressed with Hilary Benn's oratory in the debate on whether to bomb Syria.

Woman of the year

Jessica Ennis-Hill, for proving that you can come back in sport, returning to competition after a long postpartum lay-off and not only being competitive but actually landing another world title. So often the SPOTY bridesmaid, I hope she scoops the Beeb's big prize this year.

Honourable mentions: if Jess is my woman of the year, then I must give fellow heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson a nod too, as she looked like she might upside the Ennis roadshow until her World championship crumbled in the sand of the long jump pit. Oh, and she set national records for the indoor high jump and long jump (no mean feat for a multi-eventer!), and broke Jess's national indoor pentathlon record too. Rio next year looks good for KJT, fingers crossed.

Tool of the year

An easy win for Donald Trump, given what goes on between his ears and what comes out of his mouth. A fool, yes, but a dangerous one. Imagine a contemporary Cuban missile crisis, with Trump and Putin in a stand-off. Ye gods...

Honourable mentions: Tyson Fury - fair play, he ended Klitschko's long reign as heavyweight champion, against the odds, and that's some achievement (even if Wladimir looked to be in decline)... so what a shame, then, that the current holder of one of the biggest titles in world sport can't be a good role-model.

And that's it. If you've read this far, what do you reckon: agree/disagree? What have you loved and loathed this year?

Latitude - "like a Guardian readers' convention"

This year marks ten years of the Latitude Festival. Having gone yesterday, I can say that I've been, in part or in whole, to half of them (the other four being 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2014). It's changed a bit in that time - it's a bit bigger, with a few more stages, and a bit more corporate (yurts sponsored by Pepsi Max, anyone?) but essentially remains the best (and most manageable) multi-disciplinary festival. I've changed a bit too. Now I know that going on your own isn't the ideal way to experience a festival but that was also the case in 2012 and 2014 as well, and did I enjoy myself as much yesterday as I have in previous years? No. Were there moments when I wished I was somewhere else? Yes. Did I, as on every previous occasion, leave last night with a burning desire to buy an album or a book by someone I hadn't heard/read previously but had discovered as Latitude? No. So, will I be going next year...? Probably not...but you never know. Depends who the headliners are. Anyway, whilst not reaching the heights of past glories, my day in the scorched dustbowl of Henham Park was still a good one. Here, in the best tradition of my old festival diaries, is what I saw.

Sunday:

• Nina Conti : Cabaret stage. The only time all day I couldn't get in somewhere, so I watched Nina through a tent flap. As I might have written before, I'm a big fan of Nina and whilst her vent sidekick Monkey is where she's most comfortable, the biggest laughs of her set were reserved for making puppets of a whole family, strapping them into prosthetic mouths and them giving them all distinct voices. I know I haven't described that very well, so if the distant pic of Nina doing this with the family's mum comes out okay I'll add it to this post later so you can see what I mean.
• Cobain: Montage Of Heck : Film & TV Arena. It might seem like a wasteful use of precious festival time to spend over an hour and a half watching a film but I missed this at the cinema and was keen to catch it whilst I could. And what an excellent film it is, making extensive use of rich archive material, interspersed with animated versions of Kurt's notebooks and interviews with most (though not all - Dave Grohl is largely absent) of the key players in this tale. Mum, dad, stepmother, girlfriend, wife - they all get a chance to have their say, and deflect blame from themselves. My only slight issue was with the use of animation based on Kurt's notebooks and doodles, specifically that there was no indication that the source material was contemporaneous to the issue it was being used to illustrate.
• Eddie Argos : Poetry Arena. Lead man with Art Brut, Eddie's show was called something along the lines of How To Make It In A Band, but it was really just a stream of consciousness series of anecdotes about being in lots of bands, and having a mild whiff of success. It was quite funny in places though.

• The Boomtown Rats : Obelisk Arena. Fair play to Sir Bob and the boys for not just delivering a greatest hits set. Unsurprisingly though, those hits were the only songs to really energise the crowd - the less well-known material, at times, veered too close to self-indulgence. But fair play, again, to Bob for suitably Geldofian crowd interaction: having drawn attention to his "pretend snakeskin suit", he proceeded to lambast the audience for their "crap t-shirts and weekend shorts", concluding that we were "dressed liked cunts". And I can't deny, he had a point.
• Too Much Information : Wellcome Trust Hub. On my way to the smaller of the Greenpeace tents for the best value tea and cake on site, I popped into the Faraway Forest and found the Wellcome Trust Hub (you see, so corporate) and listened to some academics talk about stress and how information overload is contributing. It was shady, quiet and uncrowded - I felt my own festival stress drop away. I also learnt that extreme childhood trauma creates a trajectory for higher stress response throughout life, so how you handle the rough stuff isn't just genetic, it's a product of your early life. So early, in fact, that pregnant mothers exposed to extreme stress are unknowingly skewing the stress response of their as-yet unborn offspring, making them less able to deal with it. Who knew?
• Young Fathers : BBC 6Music stage. I went to see these on the strength of their description in the festival programme and implicit 6Music endorsement, but I knew this wasn't for me within half a song. Shame.
• Susanne Sundfør : i Arena. Having bombed out of the 6Music stage much earlier than expected, I stumbled off into the woods in search of something interesting. And I found it: Susanne is from Norway, has a superb, soaring voice and an endearing stage presence. At first I wasn't overly enamoured with the synth-pop backing - it seemed a little too strident - but I persevered, moved a little bit further back into the trees, and listened to Susanne's entire set whilst collecting my thoughts.
• Jason Manford : Comedy Arena. I'm not a huge fan of Manford, but as I was passing I stuck my head in. Latitude has learnt its lesson from years gone by, and the Comedy tent is now massive - gone are the days of as many people listening in from outside as there are in the tent. Anyway, part of the reason I didn't warm to Manford is that he seems a tiny bit too pleased with the success he's had - I lost count of the subtle references to DVD recordings and how a tented festival show is very different to playing large theatres or doing television. His best material came at the end - whilst hardly original, he got big laughs, even from your curmudgeonly reviewer, from the rich comic seam of his young children, and his successes (and failures) in parenting them.
• Pippa Evans : Cabaret stage. As an antidote to the One Show comedy of Manford, Pippa's "There Are No Guilty Pleasures" show was a comic delight. Comedy, songs... comedic songs, Pippa does it all. And gets out into the crowd to absolve the audience of their guilty pleasure sins at the end of the show. Recommended.

• Manic Street Preachers : Obelisk Arena. I wonder how often the Manics play a festival but aren't the headliners? Whatever, this was the reason I had chosen Sunday for my day ticket, so it is with a degree of reluctance that I report the Manics were okay, bordering on really good, but no better. Dare I even say that their set and performance seemed a bit perfunctory at times? They rattled through plenty of hits (opening with Motorcycle Emptiness, closing with Design For Life, and Everything Must Go, You Love Us and lots more in-between. Sure, James and Nicky bounced up and down a bit, but it just seemed a bit... MSP by numbers. Maybe I should have got nearer the stage, it might have seemed a bit different. Side note - I watched someone make their way from the back of the arena right to the front, during Motorcycle Emptiness, holding a banner that read "You know nothing Jon Snow." Any ideas, anyone?
• Mark Billingham and My Darling Clementine : Literature Arena. What happens when you mix a popular crime novelist with a country and western duo? This is what happens. Mark was reading from his latest, and it was interspersed with songs from My Darling Clementine. C&W isn't really my thing, but I've read a disproportionate amount of Billingham's output, and this was pleasant enough. It didn't make me want to seek out the new book though, if that's what it was, primarily because it didn't feel authentic - in a departure for Billingham, here he's writing about the US, not the UK, and he just doesn't know it enough. Casual references to Walmart and "having a soda" just seem a bit...obvious? Tired? Clichéd?
• Roni Size Reprazent : Film & TV Arena. Now this is not my usual cup of tea, which is ironic given that I only happened upon Roni et al whilst queueing to get a cuppa. The tent was rammed, and lots of people were watching through the open doors because the energy that was pouring forth was palpable. So too was the effect the music was having on the crowd inside the tent, for it was simply a sea of writhing limbs, pulsing under a kinetic light-show. Quite incredible to behold, and more than enough to make me overcome my Pavlovian response and stop to listen. A real bonus.
• Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds : Obelisk Arena. With a pleasing symmetry, my drive to the festival had been accompanied by Noel's Desert Island Discs on Radio 4, during which I was impressed not only by his taste in music but also by how affable he has become, and how thoughtful too. Measured, almost. I can't say I've bought either album by The High Flying Birds, so I was intrigued to read the most recent is the UK's best selling album on 2015 so far. And actually, on the basis of this show, I can see why. I was also surprised to see kids who weren't even around at the time singing along to old Oasis tracks. Like their contemporaries, Blur and Pulp, it seems that Oasis really have entered the collective national consciousness in a way that might have seemed unlikely in the mid Nineties. Even so, it was mostly people my age bellowing along with Champagne Supernova, Half A World Away and Masterplan. Even Digsy's Dinner got an airing. Set closer Don't Look Back In Anger was the highpoint though, as set closers usually are, and I don't regret staying to hear every note. Noel was funny too, engaging really well with the audience, and knowingly mocking Latitude as being "like a Guardian readers' convention". Which, of course, it is. Anyway...Noel and his Birds flew higher than I'd expected, and were by far the best thing I saw all day.

Noel adopts his best Pete Townshend pose

And that was that. Because I stayed for every last note, I was far from the first person back to the car park, and so set a new personal worst (1 hour 20 minutes) for getting out. But that's okay. I caught up with a bit more Radio 4 before switching to Janice Long on Radio 2. God, I'm just a Latitude programmer's dream, aren't I? Which makes it all the more surprising that I'm not sure if I'll go next year. Sure, I still cannot think of a better festival, genuinely. But either this year's programme wasn't as good as in years gone by (maybe because there are just so many festivals these days, and not enough quality acts to go around?) or I've lost a bit of my festival mojo... come back next July to find out which.

It must be fun to write headlines

I would very much like to see Misery on stage. I even think Bruce Willis could make a good fist of Paul Sheldon.

Whatever you think of this though, you can surely only admire the Guardian's headline writers...?

That was the year that was: 2014

It's mid-December, ergo it must be time for a recap of what's been good this year. NAOTY 2014, if you will (you won't). This is the fourth time I've recapped a year like this (here's 2013, 2012 and 2011) and, taken together, all these reviews really do is demonstrate just how parochial my tastes are (Michelle, in the unlikely event that you're reading this, you were right about that). Anyway, let's get on.

Best album

"Hendra" by Ben Watt - an understated masterpiece, full of beauty and pathos, and tailor-made to appeal to forty-something blokes who have taken to questioning everything, not least their own mortality and that of their loved ones. Features bonus Bernard Butler too.

Honourable mentions: "World Peace Is None Of Your Business" by Morrissey; "Indie Cindy" by Pixies; "Live at Bush Hall" by Martin Rossiter.

Best song

"Silver Snail" by Pixies - it's been so good to have some new material from Black Francis et alia, and I mean it as a compliment when I say this track could comfortably have been from twenty years ago, yet somehow simultaneously shows how the band has moved on. Neat trick.

Honourable mentions: "Heart Is A Drum" by Beck; "I'm Not A Man" by Morrissey.

Best gig

Another nod here for Pixies whose set at Field Day in the summer was almost everything I could have hoped for. Even the undercard was a winner. I wrote (in shorthand) about it at the time.

Honourable mentions: I've had a quiet year, gig-wise, but Ben Watt with Bernard Butler was excellent; Damon Albarn, thunderstruck and lightning-lit at Latitude, will live long in the memory; Morrissey thrilled, despite the enormo-dome setting.

Best book

"Numbskulls" by Mark Kilner. A diverse yet subtly interconnected set of 20 short stories, showcasing the little horrors of modern life: celebrity culture, life alone, Boris Johnson... Here's my longer review from earlier in the year.

Honourable mentions: a bit of a cheat here because it's a couple of years old but I only got around to reading "Dark Matter" by Michelle Paver this year. It's an incredible ghost story, taking isolation to new heights (or depths, perhaps) in the Arctic Circle. I wish I'd written it.

Best film

For a long time I thought "Inside Llewyn Davis" has this nailed on, but the award goes to "Boyhood", Richard Linklater's simple yet incredible document of a boy growing up. Filmed over twelve years, so that all the principals age realistically in front of you, it's a moving tale of modern family life, and all the fractures and disjoints that now involves. At different times this reviewer identified with both the son and the father, which perhaps explains my heightened emotional response. Everyone involved in the making of this film deserves massive credit. Now do yourselves a favour and buy the DVD.

Honourable mentions: as mentioned, the Coen Brothers very nearly scooped this for their incredible meditation on personal failure, "Inside Llewyn Davis"; it takes some absorbing but Richard Ayoade's steampunk reimagining of modern life in Dostoyevsky-adaptation "The Double" is worth persevering with; Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley both shine in the "The Imitation Game", in which triumph is tempered with tragedy; and I thought Rosamunde Pike was terrific in "Gone Girl".

Best television

As last year, the most fiercely contended category. The award goes to "Fargo", a compelling reimagining of the Coen Brothers' icy world, with standout performances from Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Alison Tollman and Colin Hanks. Not just dark, but dark humour too.

Honourable mentions: it's been another good year for TV, so there are lots. BBC crime drama "Happy Valley" (whose botched kidnap plot owes a nod to the Coens too) was outstanding; series two of "The Fall" is great, if inevitably coming up short against series one; the genuine chills of ghost story "Remember Me" can and should be iPlayered right now; and (sort of but more than) comedies "Rev" and "The Trip To Italy" were both very rewarding.

Best comedy

David Baddiel's "Fame: Not The Musical" scoops the gong here. Its meditation on being famous in general and, specifically, not being as famous as you used to be, is very smart indeed. Stand-up, yes... but there's a lot more going on besides.

Honourable mentions: "Modern Life Is Goodish", in which Dave Gorman continues to show his working as he goes along; Alan Davies' Little Victories tour, not least for his candour in talking of mortality and life-limiting conditions (on his father's dementia: "it's not genetic, but it is inherited, so..."); Punt and Dennis's Ploughing On Regardless tour, whose transition from edgy and out-there to comfortable and nearly mainstream is complete - it's taken twenty years, but at least they haven't sacrificed being funny.

Best theatre

"An Evening With Ray Davies", ostensibly to plug his book, "Americana", but the Q&A reached far beyond that. Part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival and in partnership with the city's Writers' Centre, no-one minded at the end when talk of books was set aside, a guitar appeared, and Ray performed an acoustic "Rock and Roll Cowboys". Got an autograph and shook the guy's hand afterwards too.

Honourable mentions: I'm struggling a bit here, because I haven't seen as much on stage this year as I would have liked, but poet Luke Wright was very good at Latitude, bringing a bit of rock'n'roll swagger to the Poetry Tent.

Best blogger

The only person to retain their title from last year is Andrew Collins, whose "Telly Addict" video blog for The Guardian is twelve minutes a week of essential viewing. On top of this, Andrew also writes, for fun, the music blog "Circles Of Life", in which he seeks to dissect his favourite 143 songs of all time. Oh, and the excellent "other" blog, "Never Knowingly Underwhelmed". Andrew is, once more, my blogger of the year.

Honourable mentions: "Too Much Apple Pie" from Kippers and Spike; "The (New) Vinyl Villain" from JC; "My Top Ten" from Rol; "Is This The Life?" from Rob; and "Cultural Snow" from Tim.

Man of the year (new for 2014)

Richard Ayoade for directing The Double, writing Ayoade on Ayoade, being Gadget Man and, most of all, for his role in what would be my interview of the year, if I had such a category, when Krishnan Guru Murthy invited Richard on Channel 4 News.

Honourable mentions: putting aside any political allegiance I might have elsewhere, Gordon Brown deserves a mention, for going out on a high and reminding everyone of the power a principled and passionate politician can have. In my view, the result of the Scottish referendum was in no small part attributable to his eleventh-hour intervention.

Woman of the year (new for 2014)

Professor Alice Roberts, for bringing science to a wider audience without dumbing it down, for her terrific book The Incredible Unlikeliness Of Being, and mostly for taking an implacable stance on creationism and dealing with (the dangers of) creationists on social media.

Honourable mentions: Sadie Jones for writing Fallout and getting The Outcast finally adapted by the BBC; Keira Knightley for her role in The Imitation Game and for posing topless, un-Photoshopped, to highlight and protest the media's obsession with breasts and digital fakery.

Tool of the year (new for 2014)

David Mellor, for his rant at a taxi driver, in which he conclusively revealed himself to be everything we've all suspected for so long.

Honourable mentions: Nigel Farage whose inherent racism, inflammatory pronouncements and general policy void should really scoop him the award - it's just that I don't want him to win anything (and I'm not linking to him either - here's a link to an equally simplistic but opposing view instead); Russell Brand, who hasn't worked out yet that the best way to beat a system, especially a long-established, entrenched system, is from within... and for spouting nonsense: a sprawling and polysyllabic vocabulary is nothing without an underlying degree of sense and reality. Parklife!

And that's it. Agree/disagree? What have you loved and loathed this year?