Mirror columnist Brian Reade sees out the year with his glorious round-up of its winners and losers, and the big talents we bid a fond farewell to
War raged in Europe and the Middle East, right-wing populists were elected across the world and climate change turned the dial further towards boiling point.
But 2024 wasn’t all bad news: The Tories were washed away in a Labour landslide, Syrians kicked out the monstrous Bashar al-Assad, global child deaths hit a historic low and the BBC’s royal reporter Nicholas Witchell finally hung up his forelock.
So without further ado, let’s see who earns this year’s brickbats and who gets the bouquets…
BEST WOMAN
Taylor Swift makes the grade for boosting the UK economy by a reported £1billion through sell-out concerts. Victoria Derbyshire is up there for her dogged holding to account of the political class, plus her quizzing of ‘farmer’ Jeremy Clarkson when she made him look like the bully that he is.
The world applauded Gisele Pelicot for taking down her vile husband and the dozens of men he allowed to abuse her. But closer to home Esther Ghey showed astonishing humanity after her daughter Brianna was murdered.
Minutes after her killers were sentenced she asked for sympathy and compassion towards their families because “they too have lost a child”. She then met with one of the mothers and asked her to join her campaign to improve teenagers’ mental health. Inspirational.
BEST MAN
Pride of Britain winners Andy Evans and Jason Evans take a much-deserved bronze for their tireless campaigning to win justice for the thousands caught up in the infected blood scandal.
Snatching silver is Chris McCausland who lost his eyesight as a 22-year-old and instead of drowning in self-pity turned his tragedy into a comedy by becoming a stand-up. And then a Strictly winner who inspired so many people with disabilities.
But taking gold is Alan Bates, the man who refused to give up when the Post Office criminalised hundreds of innocent subpostmasters.
He started the year being played by Toby Jones in an ITV drama which shocked and angered the nation, carried out campaigning for justice throughout and along the way was knighted. Take a bow, sir.
BEST QUOTE
Hannah Waddingham brilliantly put down a photographer who asked her on the Olivier Awards red carpet to “show a little leg” with the response, “You’d never say that to a man. Don’t be a d**k”.
When actor Brian Cox was asked by Laura Kuenssberg about Robert Jenrick’s view that leaving the ECHR would not impact the Good Friday Agreement, he replied: “The Conservative Party are incredulous. What is this man doing? We have this expression in Scotland: his head is full of mince. It means he just doesn’t know.”
But nothing could touch Donald Trump’s claim that in Springfield, Ohio, immigrants were “eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there”. Not least because it showed how little a majority of American voters care for the truth.
WORST SIGHT
The contenders are: The obscene jump in prices faced by people who’d queued for hours to buy Oasis tickets; Jacob Rees-Mogg doing a Kardashian-style reality show which was more like an Addams Family black comedy, Ed Davey’s gurning Action Man stunts during the General Election, and the revelation of senior Labour MPs gorging on freebies after it.
England’s football fans threw a shedload of undeserved abuse at Gareth Southgate at the Euros, and the German Federation thought it a good idea to make the number 44 on the national shirt spell out SS.
But nothing literally turned our stomachs as much as the sight of turds floating in our rivers and seas thanks to privatised water companies using our money to reward their own greed.
WORST SOUND
We had Keir Starmer telling us for the 4,000th time that he was the humble son of a toolmaker. We had multi-millionaire farmers squealing like their pigs over the government asking them to pay inheritance tax.
Rishi Sunak screamed in desperation when he tried to win the election by vowing to bring back National Service, and millions of Britons screamed in agony as they waited for 10 hours in A&E or 10 months to see a dentist.
Despicable tragedy chanting also continued from cretinous football fans.
But the worst sound of all was whining millionaires, like plumber Charlie Mullins, crying about how they would be forced to leave the country they love if Labour were elected and asked them to pay a bit more tax.
WORST WOMAN
Liz Truss makes the charts for desperately wooing America’s far right and writing a book called Ten Years To Save The West in which she hilariously argued that the British Establishment stopped her doing just that.
As does Captain Tom’s dodgy daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore who earned up to £1.5million from deals involving the pandemic hero and was slammed by the Charity Commission for “serious and repeated misconduct”.
But the winner had to be the shameless face of the greatest miscarriage of British justice, former Post Office chief, Paula Vennells, who was stripped of her CBE as the scale of the wrongful prosecutions and mental torture of decent people by her organisation was revealed. And she an ordained woman of the cloth.
WORST MAN
Joe Biden let down himself and his country for not exiting the Presidential race earlier and for pardoning his jailed son after saying he wouldn’t.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin were merciless in their killing of tens of thousands of innocents and Prince Andrew carried on harming his country and family when it was revealed he’d been sucking up to a Chinese spy.
Phillip Schofield stood down from ITV’s This Morning after admitting an affair then spent months in a self-pitying strop. Elon Musk turned Twitter into a cesspit of far right poison then helped buy the American election for Trump.
But, staying with that election, the winner is the man who fired shots at the President-elect in Pennsylvania. Not only was that a heinous act but it made a martyr out of Trump and put him back in the White House.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Dame Maggie Smith, John Prescott, Sven Goran-Eriksson, Janey Godley, Donald Sutherland, Quincy Jones, Liam Payne, Annie Nightingale, Bernard Hill and Rob Burrow died and left a big hole in many hearts.
With seemingly every Hollywood luvvie and musical titan endorsing Kamala Harris as the next US president, we saw the death of the political celebrity endorsement.
Telly-wise Gavin and Stacey and Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm called it a day. And there were sad farewells in sport, with the world’s best cycling road sprinter Mark Cavendish, the finest German to have worked in Blighty, Jurgen Klopp, and Britain’s greatest-ever individual sportsman Andy Murray bidding us a fond adieu.
