Tag Archives: crystal ball

In a shocking display of preparedness my 2011 predictions are actually ready for the start of 2011. I revealed them to an eager, captive audience of friends at the Second Annual New Year’s Eve B Bar Luncheon Event, known as 2NYEBBLE10 in the never-adopted Avaragadan Calendar.

News

1. Kate gets William’s name slightly wrong in the wedding ceremony.
2. The Great British Public vote No in the AV referendum.
3. Sarah Palin officially declares as a Republican candidate for US President.
4. At least one national UK newpaper closes by the end of the year.
5. Sudan will break apart.

Sport

1. Only one of the home nations qualifies for the Euro 2012 football championships.
2. Andy Murray reaches the men’s singles final of at least one Grand Slam tournament.
3. Pyeongchang in South Korea is awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics.
4. New Zealand win the 2011 Rubgy Union World Cup.
5. Manchester United wins the English football Premiership.

Tech

1. Apple launches a new thinner, lighter, faster iPad model with a camera.
2. Yahoo sells Flickr to Google.
3. Facebook buys Skype.
4. There will not be a ‘Windows Phone 7 for Tablets’.
5. Steve Ballmer will be replaced as Microsoft CEO.

Entertainment

1. Oscar for Best Actor: Colin Firth, for The King’s Speech.
2. Oscar for Best Supporting Actor: Andrew Garfield, for The Social Network.
3. Oscar for Best Film: The Social Network.
4. Oscar for Best Director: Christopher Nolan for Inception.
5. Upstairs Downstairs returns as a regular TV series.

Cambridge

1. Pembroke finish Head of the River in the May Bumps (men’s first division).
2. Cambridge win the University Boat Race.
3. Strawberry Fair takes place.
4. By the year’s end Cambridge’s LGBT pub is not The Bird.
5. The Misguided Bus actually opens.

Celebrity Deathwatch

1. Margaret Thatcher
2. Zsa Zsa Gabor
3. Kirk Douglas
4. Michael Douglas
5. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

As ever, the glamorous Mr Chris Walsh shall be sole arbiter of correctness and at the end of the year it will be his solemn duty to produce a fully non-interactive score card explaining just how poorly I’ve done this time.

How to sum up 2010? To paraphrase Jim Crow from Dumbo, and with apologies in advance to the Disney Corporation:

I seen a penis tanned, was seen on TV and I went to London to march with Pride. But I been done seen about everything, when I seen a Melanie fly.

However, I did as usual make some predictions for the year just gone, and the results are in – courtesy of Chris as per. Adjudications and corrections in square brackets. Feel free to insert your own oar in the comments.

The Oscars

• Best Actor: Colin Firth, A Single Man [No – Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart]
• Best Actress: Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia [No – Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side]
• Best Original Screenplay: District 9 [No – The Hurt Locker]
• Best Director: James Cameron, Avatar [No – Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker]
• Best Picture: Up in the Air [No – The Hurt Locker]

[Score: 0/5]

UK General Election

• The election takes place on March 25th [No – May 6th]
• Predicted share: Con 39%, Lab 32%, Lib Dem 21% [Close enough – 36%, 29%, 23%]
• Predicted seats: Con 296, Lab 267, Lib Dem 56 [Close enough – 306, 258, 57]
• A Green party MP is elected [Yes – Caroline Lucas]
• Esther Rantzen wins Luton South [No – she lost her deposit]

[Score: 3/5]

Entertainment

• ITV closes down ITV3 and ITV4 to save money [No]
• Britain’s Got Talent contestants include a trio of drag artistes collectively known as The Fleurettes [No]
• Robbie Williams rejoins Take That for at least one concert [Everything but! Rejoined Take That, recorded an album, announced 2011 tour, performed with Gary at Help for Heroes concert, Take That performing New Year’s Eve in Barbados but without Robbie – 0.9 points]
• The final UK Big Brother is won by a lesbian [No – Josie, or Brian Dowling if you count Celebrity Big Brother]

[Score: 0.9/4]

Science

• The Large Hadron Collider does not find the Higgs Boson this year [True]
• Exoplanet GJ 1214b is confirmed as a water ocean planet with an atmosphere [No]

[Score: 1/2]

Sport

• Winter Olympics: Great Britain win one gold medal [True], one silver medal [Wrong – zero] and zero bronze medals [True]
• World Cup semi-finalists (in no particular order): England [No], Brazil [No], Denmark [No], Argentina [No]
• Cambridge win the University Boat Race [True]
• Andy Murray wins a grand slam singles tournament [No]
• A fatal accident occurs during the construction of Olympic Park in Stratford [No]

[Score: 3/10]

Celebrity Deathwatch

• The Duke of Edinburgh [No]
• Jimmy Young [No]
• Jimmy Saville [No]
• James Garner [No]
• Lady Gaga [No]
• Ian Paisley [No]

[Score: 0/6]

[Total score: 7.9/32]

Well, that was rubbish as usual. Any moment now: my 2011 predictions.

Astrology is, of course, bunkum. However, my mum has furnished me with the following prediction – precisely tailored for me and the millions of others born between two arbitrary dates – from the pages of, I imagine, the Daily Express.

Despite a slow beginning to the year, career matters pick up speed in mid-January.  From then on, there’s no looking back.  The eclipses in January and June target your work ambitions and point to important changes on the horizon.  What you’ll be looking for in 2010 is quality not quantity and by mid-year you could reach a watershed period in your life when you’ll want to take stock.  As revolutionary Uranus stimulates your curiosity for matters unconventional, you will be drawn to subjects that have fascinated you for years.  Whether it’s developing your own website, going freelance, learning about alternative healing or immersing yourself in research, as long as you watch your finances in April and May, what begins with small steps this year could well become a giant – and lucrative – leap into a successful new career.

I’m crossing my fingers.

To make this year’s predictions I watched a few episodes of the little-known 1980s Jimmy Perry sitcom Oh, Doctor I Ching! (starring Paul Shane made up as a nineteenth century Chinese fortune-teller from Rotherham) and matched the patterns generated from the resulting vomit to the wallpaper in John Lewis. Then, treating the price of each roll of wallpaper as a page number, I wrote down the first letter on each corresponding page of Dan Brown’s latest magnum o’pus The Lost Symbol (discarding the inevitable second wave of vomiting this induced). I used this sequence of gibberish (the letters, not the book) as the identifier part of the URL for a YouTube video: this turned out to be a montage of lolcat images set to a Rick Astley track. Playing this track backwards at half-speed revealed the address of a milliners in Covent Garden, wherein an elderly lady whisked me through a secret door to a spiral staircase leading to a disused underground station. Here the King of the Rats welcomed me with a garland of cigarette butts and his Rat Army carried me aloft to the Rat Parliament (changing at Leicester Square). The secrets revealed to me there by the Prime Ministrat were world-shattering and scandalous but ultimately all about rats so I just knocked up any old rubbish as usual and here it is.

The Oscars

• Best Actor: Colin Firth, A Single Man
• Best Actress: Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia
• Best Original Screenplay: District 9
• Best Director: James Cameron, Avatar
• Best Picture: Up in the Air

UK General Election

• The election takes place on March 25th
• Predicted share: Con 39%, Lab 32%, Lib Dem 21%
• Predicted seats: Con 296, Lab 267, Lib Dem 56
• A Green party MP is elected
• Esther Rantzen wins Luton South

Entertainment

• ITV closes down ITV3 and ITV4 to save money
• Britain’s Got Talent contestants include a trio of drag artistes collectively known as The Fleurettes
• Robbie Williams rejoins Take That for at least one concert
• The final UK Big Brother is won by a lesbian

Science

• The Large Hadron Collider does not find the Higgs Boson this year
• Exoplanet GJ 1214b is confirmed as a water ocean planet with an atmosphere

Sport

• Winter Olympics: Great Britain win one gold medal, one silver medal and zero bronze medals
• World Cup semi-finalists (in no particular order): England, Brazil, Denmark, Argentina
• Cambridge win the University Boat Race
• Andy Murray wins a grand slam singles tournament
• A fatal accident occurs during the construction of Olympic Park in Stratford

Celebrity Deathwatch

• The Duke of Edinburgh
• Jimmy Young
• Jimmy Saville
• James Garner
• Lady Gaga
• Ian Paisley

With the clock ticking down to the end of what Pacific Islanders are already calling last decade, it’s time to reveal the results of my 2009 predictions. I have again enlisted the assistance of the glamorous Chris Walsh to make the official adjudication. The next voice you hear in your head will be his.

Here are the scores on the doors miss ford, come on dollies do your dealing….

It looks just like my uncle Oscar

• Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger [Still no reaction on winning from the ingrate, 1 POINT]
• Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler [Went to SEAN PENN, Nil POINTS]
• Best Supporting Actress: Taraji P Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Nope, Penelope Cruz, Nil Points]
• Best Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader [Nazis or nuns equal oscar success — 1 POINT]
• Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Nope, it was SLUMDOG, NIL POINTS]
• Best Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire [GOAL! 1 POINT]

TOTAL: 3 / 6

I’m glad you asked me that question, Jeremy

• Peter Mandelson loses his job as Business Secretary. [Wikipedia says not only has he kept this post, he has had his powers “enhanced” (adamantium claws?) while also being appointed first secretary of state. Nil points]
• Alistair Darling loses his job as Chancellor. [Nope, still there. Nil points]
• Ed Balls becomes the new Chancellor. [Nope, Nil points]

TOTAL: 0 / 3

Wonderful World of Nature

• Yellowstone does not explode and turn much of North America into (even more of) a wasteland. [Truth! 1 point. Was this ever anticipated though??? In other news, London was not devastated by a tidal wave of custard…]
• A global flu pandemic starts. [True! This is a proper impressive prediction, so 2 points!]
• There will be two earthquakes of magnitude 8 or above on the Richter scale. [Gah! Obsolete unit alert! Nobody uses the Richter scale anymore, apparently. It’s all “Moment Magnitude Scale” now. Well, Samoa was the worst earthquake of 2009 and that scored 8.3 on the Richter scale, which equates to 8.0 on the moment magnitude scale. 2009’s second largest earthquake was in Fiordland, with a moment magnitude of 7.8. But I can’t find anywhere that tells me what it scored on the Richter scale. It looks like it should be either just above or just below 8 exactly! I’m giving the benefit — 1 point!]

TOTAL: 4 / 3

Tedious Town of Tech

• SCO finally throws in the towel. [Looks like they are still going, despite filing for liquidations??? Nil points]
• Microsoft buys Palm to get the Pre. [Nope. Nil points]
• A statement posted to Twitter causes a publicly traded company’s stock to drop dramatically. [Google didn’t throw up any likely stories, so I’m going Nil points. Looks like it’s the only thing Twitter didn’t do this year, after exposing Carter-Ruck/Trafigura and bitch-slapping Jan Moir]

TOTAL: 0 / 3

I’m 800, you know

• Cambridge win the University Boat Race. [Nope. Nil points]
• The Guided Bus does not fully open to paying customers this year. [Truth! 1 point]
• In the 2009 May Bumps, Caius finishes first in the Men’s First Division. [Jeezuz, I couldn’t even understand the results page I found. Results to me means 2 numbers, where the bigger one is the winner. If I need a graph to understand the results, your sport is too complicated. Wikipedia says “1st & 3rd Trinity 2009 Head of the River” which means nothing to me, but this stupid sport has already wasted too much of my life … NIL POINTS!!!]

TOTAL: 1 / 3

Des or Dickie? Des, obviously

• Usain Bolt takes the 100m world record to 9.60s +/- 0.02s [9.58! spot on! 1 point]
• England is the only home nation to qualify for the football World Cup in South Africa in 2010. [Looks like it. 1 point]
• Andy Murray loses in the men’s singles final at Wimbledon. [Loses yes, finals no — out in the semis. Nil points]
• Australia retains the Ashes. [wiki says current champion England. Nil points]
• Lewis Hamilton wins more grands prix than any other driver in the 2009 F1 season. [Lewis Hamilton won 2, Jenson Button 6. Nil points]
• Felipe Massa is 2009 F1 world champion. [Massa hospitalised after Hungarian Grand Prix. Nil points]

TOTAL: 2 / 6

Celebrity Deathwatch

• Patrick Swayze [dead! 1 point]
• Margaret Thatcher [alive! Nil points]
• Norman Wisdom [alive! Nil points]
• Peter Sallis [alive! Nil points]
• Steve Jobs [alive! Nil points]
• Britney Spears [alive! Nil points]

TOTAL: 1 / 6

FINAL SCORE: 11 / 30

And this is me again. I have returned Chris to his childproof box until this time next year. I especially liked that he had to look at Wikipedia to find out whether I’d got the Ashes question right or not; that takes impressive dedication to sporting ignorance.

I impressed myself with a couple of correct predictions: the flu pandemic, the unopened guided bus (which was supposed to start service no later than September, I think, when I made the forecast) and Usain Bolt’s incredible world record. Some others were naturally massively wrong: the Formula 1 stuff for instance. The political predictions were nearly right, since there was a moment when it looked as if Darling was out. And if only I’d gone for a different pop star/nutcase in the deathwatch. Ah well.

I still haven’t thought of any 2010 predictions yet. But I’m sure I will at some point.