I believe it was John Lennon and Yoko Ono who sang: “A very merry Christmas. And a happy new year. Let’s hope it’s a good one, without Andrew Pierce.” (In the current climate of “cancel culture” and “wokeness”, can I make clear this is a joke? I may have rather put my foot in it, but I mean no ill will to the Daily Mail consultant editor and respected GB News presenter Andrew Pierce. I am certainly not hoping that Pierce is silenced in 2023. People say Pierce’s contributions to the national discourse are of no value, but I once saw a pigeon eating some sick off the floor as if it were a nourishing meal. Everything has its function. Anyway, my comments on Pierce are an allusion to that scene in Game of Thrones where Persiminnos Snake-Tongue is struck dumb by Count Cellidor’s Flamingo of Time. Will this do?)
Because of festive print deadlines, the column you are reading today was actually filed on 21 December, when the dog shit of Jeremy Clarkson’s latest grimly hand-milked hate emission was still hot on the Converse ™ ® shoe of social media. That December day was the shortest of the year, though it must have felt longer if you were lying on an icy pavement in Tiverton with a broken leg waiting for an ambulance. And that wait must have seemed even longer if you voted Tory or Brexit and finally had the clarity to realise your suffering represented a form of cosmic justice of which you were entirely deserving. The wheel turns. The wheelwright is crushed under it, still dreaming of £350m a week for the NHS, no foreigners and lovely straight bananas.
