2025 Headline of the Year nominee (April)

For anyone who’s had enough hard news for 2025, I have written a nice cosy story about inadvertent Christmas animals, with lots of pictures of Sybil and Genevieve looking either tiny or magnificent or both www.independent.co.uk/voices/rescu...

The Inside Legoland at Christmas doc on All4 is absolutely lovely and has it all: nerds, health and safety, snow, dancers, a handmade 9m-tall Duplo tree and dogs in Christmas jumpers.

I need you to imagine what this could be, and then go and read the thread, because it’s better than you could possibly imagine.

Sooz should either be paid by the BBC each year for doing this and/or given a part in Eastenders.

Finally went to the Lower Morden Lane Christmas lights and WOW. Home Alone’s lighting happened in South London and it’s raising money for St Raphael’s Hospice!

I gave #Karlos all 8 of my votes even though I was not watching the final but looking at Christmassy tractors and I am now DOUBLE THRILLED! #Strictly

There’s been a significant attack of myjourneyitis on Strictly and given The X Factor finished in 2018 we can only *slightly* blame that

Sybil sends her very best regards to anyone caught up in a panic at the shops today

A beautiful accuracy burn by Melissa Quinn at CBS News www.cbsnews.com/live-updates...

Happy 9th birthday to the time my parents brought over wine in a plastic box because Mum was “increasingly wary of glass".

As a former editor of Popbitch – and the proud owner of a legal letter sent by HarperCollins, accusing me of being "highly likely to cause serious harm to [their former star client]’s reputation both as an individual and author” – may I just say: GET IT RIGHT UP YE

Or is publishing success at that scale not actually anything to do with the writing in the books, and just a matter of saturation branding and marketing?

If the industry rumours are true about Walliams using ghost writers, a sane publisher would sign the (clearly very successful and competent) back room hack(s) up, come clean, throw the same publicity machine behind them, and have a fantastic line of popular kids’ books ready for next year.

David Walliams has been dropped by his publisher following an investigation by The Telegraph into inappropriate behaviour towards young women. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12...

If you’re at a loss, turn over to iPlayer and look up London International Horse Show for the Puissance - extreme high jumping. It’s at 1.9m at the moment which is 5cm taller than me.

How about illustrating this with a picture of a kid seeing his dad treat women like shit rather than a kid with a phone.

I've written about everyone's favourite jobs magnate/magnet, George Osborne, the ultimate millennial sidehustling kween, despite actually being Gen X www.independent.co.uk/voices/georg...

George Osborne works in AI now. Can he please leave some jobs for the rest of us? – @katbrownwrites.com www.independent.co.uk/voices/georg...

Would anyone like two tickets to Dennis Sever’s House at Christmas at 8pm tonight? I have been slowly becoming lurgified in denial all day, and now my husband has too.

Would anyone like two tickets to Dennis Sever’s House at Christmas at 8pm tonight? I have been slowly becoming lurgified in denial all day, and now my husband has too.

Wheee! The BBC is doing a five-month-long stage and online tour to celebrate #TheArchers 75th anniversary in 2026. Angela Barnes will be hosting. Tickets on sale tomorrow www.fane.co.uk/the-archers

I am SO thrilled that the government is bringing back the Erasmus scheme. It is such an amazing thing for students, whether they are competent adults/linguists or like me, where the most useful thing I learned was how to fix a broken loo with bras and to politely decline an orgy.

This podcast has been the most wonderful companion this year (and it’s monthly so you never end up with an unwieldy backlog)

Urging Trump to destroy the BBC is unforgivable. Truss, Badenoch & Farage would rather betray this country than offer the BBC or the British government their support against a narcissistic foreign liar and a threat to democracy. It’s an appalling betrayal. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-...

got a full-body shiver of relief

As with many other commenters I suspect this will be ignored, begging the question why go through the costly, time-wasting business at all?

I remember South Park making fun of him for it...the whole "he can't judge other people because he's fat." That always annoyed me. Thirty years later, it was pretty obvious who was right and who were the assholes.

Here's my report from the U.S. Supreme Court on the morning of the Prop 8 arguments. Rob Reiner and Michelle Singer were among the members of the AFER team first in line. www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chri...

As a director, Rob Reiner released these five movies all in a row 1986 Stand by Me 1987 The Princess Bride 1989 When Harry Met Sally… 1990 Misery 1992 A Few Good Men All remarkable and vastly different films, showing extraordinary range and talent

I hate this story so much. She’s allowed not to see her dad. Moralising about how she’s a bitch is horrible www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family...

Trigger warning : FIERCENESS

Hello from the lovely Genevieve and her assorted paws

I saw The Fit Prince last night and am still bloody giggling. How two people can create a cast of hundreds out of thin air, three screens and an audience is beyond me. What a week to see this and Oh, Mary! Camp, sharp, brilliant theatre is on fire. kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/the...

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

Halal butchers in Newham are advertising their “festive Halal turkeys”. Tommy Robinson is scared of Newham but it’s most a place that shows what happen when lots of different faiths and cultures live happily alongside each other.

If Jane Austen had technology, this would have been the most romantic thing her characters said

ikea should start turning the show rooms into mini-mysteries to solve

Brilliant Joanna Trollope has died aged 82 – Terence Blacker (author of the Ms Wiz books) was rightly mortified about the impact of his words, not least because Trollope had no fear of a riposte and was bloody good at them. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I remember him very fondly from his role in Mr Majeika - I was too young for most of the books and had a sense of jokes going over my head but Stanley Baxter made him such a lovely character.

Sybil’s dog walkers do “awards” at their Christmas party each year. This year Syb has been voted most likely to play Barbie in a doggy remake at the “Bark Academy Awards.” Fair.

The controversial OnlyFans star’s tribute to the Reform UK leader doesn’t surprise me, says @katbrownwrites.com. Both are provocateurs who have harnessed the hunger for confrontation and outrage and turned it into power – and both sell a public persona www.independent.co.uk/voices/bonni...

The Christmas issue of The BMJ is coming soon! To get us in the mood we asked comedian @michaelspicer.bsky.social to have a look at last year's issue, and respond to some articles. Inspired by this article evaluating the cognitive abilities of AI 🤖 www.bmj.com/content/387/... #BMJChristmas

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about having booked Oh Mary! as my Christmas theatre treat tonight, not least because sources tell me it all wraps up by 9 so I can still be in bed at a reasonable hour.

The former French president only served 20 days in prison, but somehow he’s managed to get an entire book out of it, writes @katbrownwrites.com – and hams it up tirelessly over 216 self-serving pages www.independent.co.uk/voices/nicol...

Have just been reminded that my friend Christina once overheard the following in Waitrose: it’s perfect. “Mummy, does Lego have a silent T on the end like Merlot?”

Doggies on ITV klaxon, one is in a wheelchair covered in tinsel 😭

Absolute bliss - The Times has republished a chunk of Jilly Cooper’s How to Survive Christmas. The children balefully reporting on their parents’ shortcomings is particularly glorious. This should be a gift link: enjoy! 🎁 www.thetimes.com/article/2d87...