January
Trump’s inauguration
The year began with nobody RSVPing to Donald Trump’s inauguration invite. After reaching the end of his Rolodex, he eventually got 3 Doors Down to perform – so, crisis over.
Meanwhile, in popular culture, 2017 started with a similar sense of ambition and optimism, which soon turned into disappointment.
February
The Oscar blunder fallout
We used to know the drill for awards ceremonies: some off-colour compere banter, winners reeling off their thank-yous, Jennifer Lawrence wearing vintage Dior, Helena Bonham Carter wearing vintage Edward Scissorhands. But all that was swept under the red carpet this year – the year that awards lost the plot.
Who can be surprised that it began with Meryl Streep, who has every reason to rebel against acceptance-speech protocol by now? Accepting her 8,000th Golden Globe, she stood up against the yet-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump and his mocking of disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski, and the audience stood up in approval.
The tone was set. For the rest of awards season, winners looked out of place if they weren’t making some form of political statement, and – in the unfolding Trump era – there were plenty of options: the Muslim ban; the border wall; LGBTQ, racial and gender discrimination.
Things turned a different shade of bonkers at the SAG awards, when David Harbour’s barnstorming speech for Stranger Things (“We will shelter freaks and outcasts … We will get past the lies. We will hunt monsters!”) was undercut by the manic facial contortions of Winona Ryder standing next to him – confused, amazed, defiant, suspicious, everything-at-the-same-time. Nobody realised she’d stayed in character as Joyce Byers between seasons.
Not even the wizened Adele could stick to the programme. At the Grammys she had her own mini-meltdown, starting her tribute to George Michael off-key (talk about a careless whisper), then stopping the music, apologising for “fucking this up”, apologising for swearing, then apologising for starting again.
Then the Oscars provided the appropriately disastrous finale, with Warren Beatty handing the biggest award of the night to the wrong movie. It was a plot twist, or rather a plot loss, that no one saw coming – least of all Team La La Land, who were still going through their thank-yous as bewildered Team Moonlight took the stage. The painfully prolonged shambles exposed just how bad improvisational skills are in Hollywood. Sticking to the programme has never looked so appealing. SR
The Nightly Show: five reasons ITV’s attempt at news satire didn’t work
1 Chatshows are notorious for squint-inducing sets – part lap-dancing nightspot, part suburban soft play. The Nightly Show’s was especially weird, however, such as the desk that doubled up as a shelving unit, complete with wilted plant.
2 None of the guest presenters shone, but Gordon Ramsay breathlessly delivering a spit-or-swallow joke to TV chef Gizzi Erskine during a taste test made an entire nation gag.
3 John Bishop’s terriers wandering aimlessly around a doggie assault course was one of many misfiring sketches, which in this case concluded with said pets looking at their master, as if to say: “Fire your agent. Now.”
4 Monologues delivered by guest hosts tried to take a swipe at current events but failed. Note to producers: reading Trump’s tweets in a funny voice does not make for side-splitting comedy.
5 Joe Pasquale getting his bumcrack waxed via video link surely signalled the death knell for this lamentable endeavour. The welts on his rear end were nothing next to the scars sustained by viewers. Help! My eyes! FS
March
Get Out: how the film’s fresh take on horror took over 2017
With so many film sectors having a terrible year – big-budget blockbusters, comedies, sci-fi, reboots, non-reboots – horror pretty much saved the box office. How did it do this? By an obscure, mystical process known as “making movies that do not suck”.
If there’s an emblematic horror movie of 2017, it would have to be Get Out. It was accessible and exciting but also fresh and political, giving the good old they’re-all-out-to-get-me scenario a contemporary shot of racial paranoia. In a year that gave us Charlottesville and Colin Kaepernick, it felt right. But despite the States’s widening divisions, audiences had no problem identifying with a black man surrounded by creepy racists. Let’s not forget that Get Out only became possible in our current era – when an African-American film-maker (Jordan Peele) was at last entrusted with a mainstream horror movie.
It didn’t stop there, though. There were quality horrors across the board. We got huge hits such as It (which doubtless benefited from the Stranger Things effect), Split (with its all-star cast of James McAvoy, James McAvoy, James McAvoy and James McAvoy), and Annabelle: Creation (admittedly a textbook franchise horror). In the alternative margins were interesting new directions such as A Ghost Story and It Comes at Night. European cinema gave us the likes of Personal Shopper, Raw and Thelma. The horrors that really bombed were autopilot duds such as Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness, Jigsaw (AKA Saw VIII) and Tom Cruise’s overblown The Mummy – which forgot it was supposed to be a horror movie at all. In other words, movies that sucked.
If 2017 is a horror high point, though, it could well be downhill from here in 2018. As studios sift through the wreckage of their failures, they might start asking why they spent £130m on King Arthur: Legend of the Sword when Get Out made more money (more than £190m worldwide) on a budget of £3.3m. Numbers like that are hard to ignore, but horror has a nasty habit of sequelising and cannibalising its best ideas to death. Next year we could be facing a horror glut. Be afraid. Be very afraid. SR
Galway Girl: deconstructing one of the year’s most divisive singles
April
One Direction: their solo careers assessed
This month saw the release of Sign of The Times, the debut single from Harry Styles. From Niall’s nan-friendly folk, to Liam’s pop pillaging, here’s the direction the lads went in next.
‘Ed Sheeran, but twangier’
Zayn continued his endearing knack for mimicry, swapping the Weeknd of Pillowtalk for the Sia of Dusk Till Dawn (featuring Sia). Also striding through the Stars in Their Eyes dry ice was Harry, who went to LA and came back as a silk-suited hybrid of Mick Jagger and Green Man-era Mark Owen. The genre roulette wheel stopped at “Ed Sheeran, but twangier” for cosy knitwear fan Niall Horan, whose album Flicker looked like Fucker when written in capitals. Bear Payne’s dad Liam, meanwhile, regenerated as Justin Timberlake-lite, while poor Louis failed to be the main act on his own singles.
‘Unnervingly normal’
With Zayn’s moodiness cemented by fancy covers on fancy style magazines, it was up to everyone else to play repositioning catch-up. Louis appeared in the Observer and on the Noisey website employing his apparent uselessness as a selling tactic, while Niall was described as “unnervingly normal” in his Sunday Times Culture feature. For Liam, his shift away from his boyband past involved the cover of the Telegraph magazine and a ludicrous amount of blue steel pouting. The real repositioning prize, however, was saved for Harry, who appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in an elegantly preposterous profile written by Cameron Crowe.
‘Unsexy sex romp’
Zayn started the year cosying up with girlfriend Gigi Hadid’s bessie mate (and Harry’s ex) Taylor Swift in unsexy sex romp I Don’t Wanna Live Forever. Louis sang a couple of words near a mic being held by Bebe Rexha on Back to You, while Liam appeared on a Zedd song and danced weirdly near a non-plussed Quavo on debut solo single, Strip That Down. Niall is friends with everyone, the sweetheart, while Harry got Stevie Nicks – the mother lode for any authenticity-seeking serious musician – to appear on stage with him in LA.
‘Styled by Gap’
Since his departure, Zayn’s had a US and UK No 1 album and single, plus two other UK Top 5 hits. Liam’s Strip That Down was Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic, Louis had some success at home but made little dent in the US, while Harry’s Sign of the Times topped the charts in the UK and his self-titled album did the double (ie it was a US and UK chart-topper, do keep up). But it’s sweet Niall and his “styled by Gap” acoustic ditties that could be the real long-term success story; he’s had two UK Top 10s, topped the US Adult Top 40 chart in America with the actually very good Slow Hands and only missed out on a UK No 1 album to fellow ex-boybander George Michael. As the saying goes, it’s always the quiet ones lumbered with braces early on who come good in the end. MC
Nicole Kidman: why the actor had a bonza year
If a 50-year-old woman is considered past it in Hollywood, then nobody told Nicole Kidman. She started 2017, the year of her half-century, with her fourth Academy Award nomination for Lion. In the event, she didn’t add to her tally (the Oscar went to Viola Davis for Fences), but did win the evening’s arguably more important battle of the memes. What was that gif-tastic “seal clap” all about? An effort to protect expensive rings, on loan from Harry Winston, apparently.
Then onwards to the Côte d’Azur in May, where Kidman was dubbed Queen of Cannes before her private jet had even touched down. Her four entries in the festival’s official selection would have ensured she stood head and shoulders above other Hollywood A-listers, even if, at 5ft 11in, she didn’t also literally tower above most. Both Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer paired her winningly with Colin Farrell, with Kidman adding a cool elegance to his unpredictable febrility.
On television, Kidman’s performance in Big Little Lies (which she also co-produced) won her an Emmy, praise for revealing the reality of domestic violence and, in co-stars Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz and Shailene Woodley, a ready-made squad to rival that of fellow willowy blonde, Taylor Swift. But perhaps Jane Campion’s second series of Top of the Lake offered Kidman her most intriguing role of the year. As she revealed in interviews, playing Julia allowed for some oblique exploration of her own experiences of motherhood, adoption and surrogacy.
Does it add to Kidman’s satisfaction that while her career goes from strength to strength, ex-husband Tom Cruise goes from flop to embarrassing flop?
If so, she’s far too evolved to let on. EEJ
Pepsi-gate: how the ‘influencers’ stopped getting likes
Ah, to be an “influencer”, paid bajillions of dollars to promote everything from makeup to flat tummy teas to an audience of plebs. It all looked so attractive – until 2017 came along to destabilise the world’s superstar selfie-takers.
First up, Kendall Jenner – the eldest of Kris Jenner’s non-Kardashian brood – who was the star of a tone-deaf Pepsi campaign. In it, Jenner successfully diffuses police-protester relations at a Black Lives Matter-style protest by giving a police officer a fizzy drink. If only it were all that simple, Kendall! She and sister Kylie also launched – and then pulled – a controversial T-shirt line that featured images of their faces superimposed on to unlicensed photos of the likes of Biggie and Tupac.
Also perfecting her saccharine apologies this year was pal Gigi Hadid, who claimed to have “the utmost respect and love for the people of China” after a video circulated online of her squinting next to a biscuit shaped like a Buddha in February. Then in July, she and boyfriend Zayn Malik were the subjects of a much-ridiculed Vogue cover that claimed the androgynously dressed pair were “gender fluid”. Sister Bella Hadid was also ridiculed in October when a video of her chatting about trainers in an approximation of black slang spawned thousands of “homeboy” memes.
But, above all these examples of questionable influencer behaviour, two stand out. Video-maker PewDiePie lost contracts with YouTube and Disney after posting antisemitic videos, later describing himself as a “rookie comedian” in something of a non-apology. Elsewhere, Ja Rule’s Fyre festival – promoted by the likes of, yes, you guessed it, Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner – tanked when festival-goers arrived at their “luxury” experience in the Bahamas to find disaster relief tents and cheese sandwiches. While the organisers were hit with legal action, the influencers – who hadn’t signalled that their social media posts were adverts – got out unscathed.
However, with this much controversy, perhaps 2018 will be the year the wheels truly come off their pristine social media vehicles. HJD
May
From Master of None to Insecure: how dating apps spiced up TV’s sex life
Following on from the likes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Broad City, 2017 was the year that TV took a swipe at dating app culture in wry, realistic fashion. The second series of Issa Rae’s dramedy Insecure opened with one such scene. Fictional Issa is sat with her ex in a restaurant. Except that he isn’t there. As the camera pans back from Issa to her date, we see a total stranger. And then another. And then another. She’s on a string of unsuccessful dates, answering the same tired questions from men she’s met on Tinder, Hinge and Bumble. Frustrated, she does some trademark rapping in the toilet (“My ex won’t take me back/ So my broken ass is here, small-talking over apps”), before accidentally spilling a drink over one of her suitors.
Elsewhere, Aziz Ansari’s Master of None offered the male perspective of the “revolving door” scenario in the episode titled First Date. Like Issa, Dev (Ansari) is on a series of dates, which – over the course of a 30-minute episode – are spliced with one another as we confront awkwardness, fleeting connections and even racism, as Dev finds a blackface “mammy”-style jar one date keeps her condoms in. It also emphasises the gamified nature of apps, with Dev firing off the same witty opener (“I’m going to Whole Foods, want me to pick you up anything?”) to two more matches at the end of the episode.
And so, both shows succeeded in showing the anonymous, restless and often shallow nature of post-Tinder dating, while remaining sympathetic to the people caught in its hold – and, maybe, making audiences think twice about their own swiping etiquette. HJD
June
Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: how woke was pop?
Not since the Red Wedge gigs of the 1980s has there been such a boom in political pop, with the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé and Stormzy exploring issues such as structural racism and political corruption. Even Jeremy Corbyn went from embattled leader to Glastonbury Pyramid Stage star, preaching collectivism and progressive taxation between Craig David and Run the Jewels.
The Trump presidency has now intensified an artistic urgency that performers feel compelled to respond to. In fact, artists who didn’t have anything to say about the world struggled: Taylor Swift came back with a single that was all about her, and was roundly sniffed at for being too self-involved. “Simply commenting on her soured reputation does not a cultural critique make,” said USA Today.
This has put some artists in an odd position, those who don’t really have anything worthwhile to say or don’t want to be so radical that brands or right-wing fans are scared off. The answer? Keep things vague (interestingly, 2017 saw a lot of press releases frame sad songs as “challenging the stigma of mental health issues” and happy ones as “anthems of self-empowerment”).
The queen of the vague-pop movement is Katy Perry, who changed her Twitter bio to “Artist. Activist. Conscious” and returned with lead single Chained to the Rhythm, with its refrain “So comfortable, we’re living in a bubble, bubble/ So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble”. It sounds like it could be against consumerism? But crucially, only if you want it to be.
Pink, a long-term veteran of vague pop, returned with What About Us, a sort of Earth Song of indecision. “We are problems that want to be solved/ We are children that need to be loved,” she sings, demanding answers about something from no one.
Then there’s Harry Styles’s Sign of the Times, Khalid’s Young, Dumb and Broke and Marshmello’s Silence – songs just political enough to keep woke early adopters happy, but not so challenging that a Capital FM DJ couldn’t say, “Banging tune!” after playing them. SW
July
Beyoncé: dominating film, music and TV without even trying
It’s Beyoncé’s world and we’re just living in it.” So screamed Newsweek in 2013, and – you know what? – Newsweek was right. With the singer having performed at the Super Bowl, toured the world and released one of the defining albums of 2016 in the shape of Lemonade, 2017 may have felt like a fallow Beyoncé year in comparison, but her influence was everywhere. The year started with the announcement that she’d be headlining the annual desert-based fashion parade Coachella, only for that to be axed a month later when she announced much bigger news – she was pregnant with twins.
The future-era-defining insemination was communicated on 1 February via a style magazine-ready photoshoot – since parodied and copied by fans and D-list celebrities alike – that received more than 11m likes on Instagram. Obviously – obviously! – Beyoncé wouldn’t just be having the one child this time around, and her more-is-more attitude to human being construction was swiftly copied by George Clooney. When the Knowles-Carter twins – Rumi and Sir – arrived, they were presented to the world via another heavily stylised and copied Instagram photoshoot that attracted more than 10m likes and caused sales of lilac organza to treble (probably).
Her influence also spread across the dining room table to Mr Beyoncé Knowles, AKA Jay-Z, who released 4:44, a deeply personal album that shed some light on the person behind the curtain and came complete with expensive-looking videos for each track. This homage – let’s call it Diet Lemonade – was also employed by Fergie, whose blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Double Dutchess collection was released as a visual album, while returning warbler Jessie J also mimicked Lemonade’s spoken-word interludes on the overwrought trailer for her new album, ROSE – or Realisations, Obsessions, Sex, Empowerment.
The writers of finger-on-the-pulse Netflix comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt were also inspired, with Titus Andromedon “Lemonading” his way through a breakup, ie walking down a street with a baseball bat while wearing yellow. In fact, even Beyoncé’s fruit-based album title has since filtered through popular culture – Drake sang about passionfruit on, well, Passionfruit; NERD and Rihanna released a song called Lemon; Girls Trip featured graphic oral sex tips involving a grapefruit and a banana, while Timothée Chalamet wanked into a peach in Call Me By Your Name. Elsewhere, Kelly Clarkson stole the wide-rimmed hat from the Formation video for her own Love So Soft visual, while Taylor Swift and her choreographers were accused of ripping off that same video for the dancing-in-a-line bits in Look What You Made Me Do.
In fact, the only thing Beyoncé didn’t seem to instigate was this year’s trend of English-speaking singers “remixing” Spanish-language songs. Justin Bieber, Little Mix and, er, the X Factor’s Matt Terry all released chart-bothering, Latin-flavoured songs before Beyoncé’s reworking of J Balvin’s Mi Gente came out in September. Mind you, let’s be honest here, Beyoncé basically invented the Spanish language back in 2007 with Irreemplazable, her seminal EP featuring Spanish versions
of Irreplaceable, Listen (Oye) and Beautiful Liar (Bello Embustero). She was basically 10 years ahead of the game. MC
August
Love Island: an interview with Marcel
How do you feel about boot-cut jeans?
Not a fan – a disrespect to any form of footwear.
Have you ever been chucked out of anywhere for bad behaviour?
Yes, maths class with Miss Wensley and French class with Madame Brimsom.
Do you have a naked shower at the gym/pool or do you use cubicles?
My gym has cubicles.
Have you ever had your hair touching your shoulders?
Yes, I used to have cornrows.
Which part of your body would you most like to change?
My calves. I’ve always wanted bigger calf muscles.
What’s the most embarrassed you’ve ever been in front of your mother?
When she walked in on me having sex.
Did a teacher ever make you cry?
Nah, all my teachers loved me, bar the two mentioned above.
What’s your phone screensaver?
Gabby in a swimsuit.
KT Tunstall or Dido?
Dido all day.
What should Jacob Rees-Mogg call his seventh child?
Maximus Royston Vincent Rees-Mogg.
What smell do you hate?
Marmite.
Engagement selfies: yes or no?
Yes.
HJD
Lorde: the singer’s flu brought improvisational dance to MTV
Hair-raising: the year in wigs
September
The Great British Bake Off: Noel Fielding’s shirts rated
Five of Noel’s best shirts (from left to right)
1 Camden in the 00s
When the new cast of GBBO was announced, it prompted some publications to ask, “Who is Noel Fielding?” Several articles were illustrated with an image of Noel wearing this shirt. Note the guitars; the angry colour scheme; the vintage fabric. It’s the spirit of Camden circa 2002. In answer to those headlines, this is precisely who Noel Fielding is.
2 Rocky ravens
As if to expand on the first question – who is Noel Fielding? – Noel chose Cake Week to wear a shirt made by designers Silken Favours, printed with kitsch ravens. It is no accident that a classic Portlandia sketch defines hipsters as people who arbitrarily put birds on things willy nilly. Is Noel’s shirt a piece of social commentary? Is a raven black?
3 ‘I can make you ice-cream’
You’d think that wearing the exact same shirt as Zoella might mark you out as slightly unhinged, wouldn’t you? Not Fielding. Being sartorially simpatico with a celebrity vlogger like Zoella is the marker of the sort of chutzpah that sets Fielding apart from other survivors of the 00s art-rock scene. It also helped that Sandi Toksvig’s shirt was from Forever 21 and truly horrible.
4 Smiles all round
This is the shirt Fielding wore for Bread Week. The best shirt of the lot – the blue pink combination is nicely post-gender, the smiley faces remind us he has a smartphone. The length even made it a bit 16th-century nobleman. Still, it’s all about silhouette these days, and it’s wardrobe choices like this that we’ll remember when the robots take over and stuff.
5 Totally tomato
For Italian Week, Noel went fully method and wore a shirt displaying a fundamental element of pizza: tomatoes. He claimed it was homemade, dishing out wisecracks about passata as he danced about the tent, but it’s actually vintage Kenzo, making it the coolest shirt. Except for the rampant unbuttoning, which just sort of ruins the whole look. MF
Mother!: the reviews are in ...
Fifty shades of Gray
Also in September, Sampha won the Mercury prize. In fact, it was a great year for sad male singer-songwriters, here’s how some of them scored on the David Grayscale.
Ed Sheeran
Score: 1 out 3
Next time people ask what the monarchy has done for us lately, remind them that we live in a world where Ed Sheeran – a man who looks as if he was teleported to pop stardom through a magical cupboard in his bong-strewn bedroom – has an MBE. Seven million copies of his new album sold, and a one-man Glasto headline slot, mean he has every right to grin like an unnerving sex goblin.
Sampha
Score: 2 out of 3
Eight years ago, he was the intern at Young Turks. Now, Drake sends him annotated bottles of wine and Frank Ocean buzzes him into the booth. Chin up, it may already have happened.
David Longstreth, Dirty Projectors
Score: 3 out of 3
Once upon a time, we all liked to pretend that glitchy cubist-pop from Byrne-obsessed mini maestros was what we were listening to while having sex. Times change. Longstreth’s dejected new album has sunk with barely a ripple – but with most of the usual squawks still in place. GH
October
Stranger Things 2: what the Winona-at-the-SAG-awards-face happened in episode seven?
We all love Stranger Things, but we didn’t love the obvious farrago that was The Lost Sister, the seventh episode of this year’s second season.
Stranger Things was never a story-structure masterclass, but ST2 was a mess in that respect, and the placing of episode seven highlighted that brutally. Eleven’s intriguing “sister” Kali was the season’s cold open, then vanished utterly as the early episodes trod water. When we finally got going, back she came to slam on the narrative brakes. No! Worse than that, though, episode seven wasn’t just mistimed, it was superfluous. A recurrent ST flaw is events having minimal consequences: Eleven returned slightly more powerful and not a cold murderer. Whoop-de-do. A small rewrite earlier on and episode seven could have been cut, which really shouldn’t be possible.
We’d forgive all this if Kali’s gang had been fun, but, Lordy, they were lazy. Cyndi Lauper on spice; a scurvy Billy Idol; a muscly black man who was actually, wait for it, mystical and sentimental; and a … nervous woman. Eleven is dull and inarticulate due to years living in a lab. What was these dweebs’ excuse? JS
Gemma Collins: the funniest fall of 2017
November
This month, Strictly and I’m a Celebrity kept us indoors – and supplied us with unexpected breakout stars. Here are the year’s best
December
Christmas albums: the best and worst festive reissues
Pentatonix: A Pentatonix Christmas Deluxe
Last year’s A Pentatonix Christmas was a shriek-packed a cappella catastrophe, and this year they’ve made it even worse by adding five more songs. The joy of Christmas has a strange ability to limit our critical faculties, but this is legitimately unlistenable.
Christmas tree on cover? Yes.
Boney M: Christmas Album
The M’s first Christmas album went platinum back in 1981; 2017’s vinyl reissue involves “high resolution mastering from the original source”. Would that be, perhaps, cranberry sauce??? Anyway, this includes Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord, ultimate proof that religion is far more palatable when presented in a disco mashup stylee.
Christmas tree on cover? Yes (only one branch, though).
Daniel O’Donnell: Christmas With Daniel O’Donnell
Not strictly a reissue, but there’s a lot of crossover with songs released on previous albums Christmas With Daniel, O’ Holy Night – The Christmas Album and Daniel O’Donnell: The Christmas Album. Notable for its release on green vinyl, ensuring sales to that all-important hipster/pensioner crossover market.
Christmas tree on cover? Yes.
Blake Shelton: Cheers, It’s Christmas
With a title that aims for festive greeting but settles on the grim wail of lonely alcoholic, Blake’s 2012 album Cheers, It’s Christmas celebrates its fifth year of existence with three new songs, one of which is titled Two-Step ’Round the Christmas Tree. Sadly it’s about the C&W two-step dance, and Craig David has not been invited.
Christmas tree on cover? Yes, two.
The Beatles: The Christmas Records
Between 1963 and 1969, Rak-Su precursors the Beatles sent flexi discs featuring what future generations would identify as “top LOLs”: indiscriminate usage of the word “gear”, whistling and, in 1965, a joke about copyright. Copyright’s not so funny when it allows for a £65 box set reissue half a century later, though, is it, lads?
Christmas tree on any of the seven covers, or the box, or the booklet? NO. CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED! PR
Mel C: ‘I can’t be doing a green juice when I’m hungover’
The original wellbeing celeb on what to do – and what not to do – during Christmas
Exercise!
Christmas is the one time you can kick back and overindulge. But if you let everything go, then once New Year comes around you’ll feel like you’ve got a mountain to climb. I’m fortunate in that I love to exercise, but my piece of advice is to move every day. If it’s a beautiful winter morning, crisp and cold, just go out and have a walk. Get out. As it’s Christmas, strangers who would never speak to you will say hello!
Eating!
I tend to eat healthily, it’s just a lifestyle I’ve always followed. But, of course, this is a time for enjoyment! Traditionally, my mum and grandma made the Christmas cake and mince pies, things we’d see as naughty. If you can make them yourself, you can use cleaner ingredients than the pre-made stuff. We’d do pastry for the grown-ups’ mince pies, and some little tarts for the kids. I love my Christmas dinners, especially really crispy potatoes. There’s a trend to do them in duck or goose fat, but I love a good old King Eddie in olive oil.
Aims!
At Christmas, we feel the pressure to keep everyone happy: giving and receiving, dinner being cooked on time, not mucking up the gravy. My advice is, as you are waking up, before you open your eyes, give yourself an intention for the day. This morning I was thinking: “Energy and strength.” A positive mantra. Maybe if you’re considering the family and children, then “patience” would be a good one. You might have overindulged the night before. Rather than feeling dread, you get an optimistic start to the day.
Apps!
It’s easy to put mindfulness to the bottom of the list around this time of year, but some meditation apps are really helpful. I use Andrew Johnson’s – he’s got lots of different styles. There are ones to feel more awake, to get into sleep mode. There’s one for positivity, confidence, to help you lose weight. He’s got a lovely soft, lilting Scottish voice.
Drink aware!
One year over Christmas and New Year I tried every type of drink. I had a night on the gin and tonic and thought: I can’t drink that again! You move on to the next. I was thinking: Is there any drink I haven’t had this festive season? Different alcohol affects people differently. I can’t drink much wine as it makes me feel groggy the next day. If you’re self-conscious at parties, drinking can become something to do with your hands. Drink water instead. And never go to a party hungry! You’ll drink on an empty stomach, which is fatal, or you’ll fill up on the snacks, which are usually unhealthy.
Drink again!
I’m a hair-of-the-dog kind of girl – which probably isn’t the healthiest on a hangover, but it’s prolonging the agony! A pint of Guinness or a bloody mary. Plus a good brekky – scrambled eggs. I can’t be doing a green juice when I’m hungover.
Rak-Su: the haiku
Four men in tracksuits,
X Factor legend awaits,
Wyclef Jean, cheers mate. MC
