Instead of fantasy football, let’s play a game of fantasy horoscopes – here’s what I can see in my crystal ball for 2023.
As a consolation prize for losing the World Cup, England’s football manager is made a life peer in the New Year’s Honours List.
He will henceforth be known as Baron Southgate of Southgate in the London borough of Enfield. Critics dismiss the appointment as “Garethgate”, a vote-seeking stunt by the Tories.
January marks the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit. Famous Rabbits include Ingrid Bergman and Angelina Jolie, but the woman of 2023 turns out to be a Rooster: Meghan, starlet of Harry’s controversial book Spare that threatens to blow down the House of Windsor.
Egged on by Camilla, a furious King Charles finally excommunicates Harry from the Royal Family and bans him from entering the UK.
The Duke of Sussex thus shares the fate of his errant great-uncle King Edward VIII, who also ran off with an American divorcee.
But Harry doesn’t get to be governor of the Bahamas.
In February, marking the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, special forces sent from Kyiv fight their way into the Kremlin and assassinate Vladimir Putin.
State-run Moscow television claim they only shot his double, while Vlad the Invader is alive and hiding in a secret bunker in the Ural Mountains. Western sources insist they got their man.
Hollywood makes movie I Was Putin’s Double, starring Rowan Atkinson as the most implausible Tsar ever to appear on screen.
In April, 10 years after quitting Parliament, David Miliband, the prince over the water in New York, announces his return to frontline UK politics.
Saintly Dave, who lost the Labour leadership battle to his little brother Ed in 2010 and chose instead to head an international rescue charity, is adopted as Labour candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
The constituency’s sitting Tory MP, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the lying, disgraced former Prime Minister, announces he will not stand at the General Election. Ermine sellers queue outside his door.
In May, the Coronation of King Charles III and his Queen Consort takes place amid great public rejoicing and without mishaps.
Well, as long as you don’t count the rear wheel falling off the Royal Coach outside Westminster Abbey – and the crown toppled from the monarch’s head by an over-excited Archbishop of Canterbury.
Not to mention (but I might as well) the TV blackout of the event by striking BBC technicians, forcing viewers to switch to Middle-East news channel Al Jazeera for live coverage. In Arabic, only.
The 75th anniversary of the founding of the NHS is celebrated in July, with a march by health workers in London demanding the pay rise promised them in the Spring Budget by Chancellor “Rich Boy” Hunt.
Two hundred nurses are arrested for shouting rude slogans about the Tories.
September brings the Rugby World Cup, played by men in various locations in France.
The French, having kicked England out of the football World Cup in 2022, proceed to mete out the same humiliation on their home ground.
The Sports Minister – impossible to identify so far ahead of the event, these things change so often – resigns.
In December, on the day that Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, your columnist turns 80. That’s when fantasy becomes only too real.
Happy New Year everyone!
