New Year is traditionally when I write a review of the previous one but this time it’s not possible. In the space I have I cannot cover all that happened last year.

In the space of 12 months we had three Prime Ministers, that’s three times as many as we had through all of the 1980s. I had a child in March and he has already lived under three Conservative leaders and two monarchs. Somehow that feels more than I have lived through.

At the start of 2022 everyone was predicting that Russia wouldn’t start a war with its neighbour. What did we know? Back then we were still pronouncing Kyiv like the chicken dish.

West Ham footballer Kurt Zouma caused outrage when he was filmed kicking his pet cat. The club fined him £250,000. It’s only fair that he should be hit in the kitty.

In March Will Smith hit Chris Rock at the Oscars. He didn’t get fined £250,000, which adds insult to injury to Chris. Zouma’s cat gets to look down at him.

After Will made it trendy, comedian Dave Chappelle was hit by an audience member. After two years of being locked down and having to do comedy gigs on Zoom I was excited to get back on stage. Then Will made punching comedians popular and I had to go back on Zoom for my own safety.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe finally returned home to the UK after being held in Iran. She returned to the UK just in time to see inflation rocket and mortgage rates shoot up. I’m sure she was happy to be back but the timing must sting.

2022 had a court case with Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy airing their metaphorical dirty laundry. We also saw a court case between Johnny Depp and Amber Herd that involed actual dirty laundry.

We started the year still under COVID restrictions but by halfway through we had monkey pox to worry about. News moved so fast in 2022 because before we ended the year the WHO renamed that disease to mpox, presumably to make it less offensive to monkeys. Chickens must feel short-changed. I still don’t know how to pronounce mpox. Do you say the M like in M People, or is it mpox that sounds like a song by the band Hanson?

We had the hottest heatwave we have ever had with temperatures so high the glue on protesters hands probably wouldn’t set.

I don’t know what 2023 will involve but if it has as much in as 2022 did I’ll need to do my first review of the year in two weeks time.