Did the past year ever feel more like a work of dystopian young-adult fiction than reality? There’s a reason for that.
Most of 2016 was made up by a bunch of adolescents in small-town Macedonia. It was the year of fake news. Whether it was Hillary Clinton running a satanic abuse ring from a pizza storefront in DC, or the £350 million windfall the NHS was going to receive as soon as Britain triggered Article 50, most of the year’s key events were either made up, or happened because of made-up stuff.
Which got me thinking. On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration, surely now’s the time to start making up the news we actually want to see this year? If we club together, we can create a supply of news that’s much more satisfying than anything served up on Breitbart or InfoWars. I’m not saying happier news necessarily. Nobody wants to read that kind of stuff. No, what we need right now is news that’s stupid enough to keep us distracted while the world descends slowly into the flames.
To get us started - and to celebrate next week’s release of the Sockpuppet paperback - I came up with six things that probably won’t happen in the coming year, but should. Find them here...