Paul Kirkley: Was it just me, or did 2022 feel like it was being played on fast-forward?

It was a year that saw the end to one long and glorious Elizabethan reign, and the entirety of a slightly shorter, slightly less glorious Elizabethan reign, while Rishi Sunak went from yesterday’s man to today’s Prime Minister in a matter of weeks – proving, in the words of that great philosopher Nick Berry, that every loser wins. (Unless you’re Donald Trump – who launched his own comeback this year – in which case you just keep pretending that you won.)

In Silicon Valley, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk – aka Phony Stark – paid $44billion for Twitter, drove it into a wall quicker than a Tesla crash test dummy, and by the end of the year was no longer the world’s richest man – just its most ridiculous. In Hollywood, meanwhile, Will Smith won his first Oscar and lost his career all on the same night. No wonder it often felt hard to keep up.

The year began with the warmest New Year’s Day on record, and Brits would later swelter through a long, equally mercury-bothering summer when, according to the tabloids, it was hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement. (Though it would still have been quite a weird thing to do.) In between those hotspots, the country took a battering from Storm Eunice, which took the roof off The O2 in a way Coldplay could only dream of.

This was also the first year in which, for most of us, the world returned to something like post-Covid normality. Heck, even I’m A Celebrity got back to Australia after two years in that draughty Welsh castle. Though some might say the sight of Matt Hancock eating a camel’s penis in the jungle with Boy George is a funny sort of normal.

The real celebrity drama, though, took place at the High Court when Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy faced each other in the witness box during the sensational ‘Wagatha Christie’ libel trial. And the place where the £1.5m in legal fees will have to be paid from? It’s… Rebekah Vardy’s account.

As Britain grappled with a cost of living crisis caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and absolutely definitely not Brexit, OK?, the nation turned as one and hailed its new king – Martin ‘Money Saver’ Lewis. Other inspirational leaders, though, were in noticeably short supply: in the summer, Boris Johnson was forced out, like all Conservative Prime Ministers eventually are, by his own MPs, and jetted off to spend more time with his Caribbean holiday donors, leaving his most loyal supporter, a stricken Nadine Dorries, curled up on his political grave like Greyfriars Bobby.

Then began the short, economy-tanking era – if that’s not too strong a word (blip? glitch?) – of Liz Truss and Kamikwasi Kwarteng, a cheese dream interlude in our island story that was probably best summed up by Penny Mordant assuring the House of Commons “the Prime Minister is not hiding under a desk”. And nor was she locked in the toilet, or throwing up into a bin. Just to be clear.

In sports news, football finally came home when the Lionesses won England’s first major football tournament since 1966, while the winter World Cup offered a chance for the men’s game to finally get some long overdue attention. We all pledged not to support the tournament in protest at FIFA corruption and Qatari human rights abuses, but briefly forgot during the GOAT final, which finished with Lionel Messi capping his incredible career by finally lifting football’s greatest prize – albeit dressed, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, in an Ann Summers négligée.

Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic said he’d rather miss out on future tennis Grand Slam tournaments than be forced to get the Covid vaccine, in the year’s second-best case of nominative determinism, after Tory groper Chris Pincher. And speaking of randy Conservatives, Tiverton MP Neil Parish resigned after being caught watching pornography in the House of Commons – having apparently discovered the X-rated sites while searching for tractors. Fill in your own joke about mufflers and throttle control here.

In a year where everything felt supercharged, even royal news – normally the most oxymoronic kind of news – was impossible to ignore. In May, The Queen celebrated her Platty Jubes by taking tea with the nation’s favourite bear, Paddington – to the delight of everyone except Winnie the Pooh and Rupert, who were so fuming, they’re considering moving to America and getting their own Netflix deal.

But it wasn’t all good news for the nation’s tea towel and novelty biscuit tin sellers: Harry and Meghan continued their bid to keep a low profile away from the media spotlight through a series of lucrative TV, podcast and book deals. But however nauseating and hypocritical their particular brand of eat-pray-love LA self-care woo-woo might have been, the people who put time and effort into hating them seemed somehow worse. Meanwhile, Prince Andrew paid £12m to a woman who he’d never even met (it says here), which was awfully generous of him. What a grand old Duke of York he must be.

And then, on September 8, came the news that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had passed away at the age of 96. Is it #TooSoon to take “a sideways look” at this story in a humourous end-of-year review column? (“Yes” – ed). Fair enough.

With The Queen gone, people instead began worshipping her near namesake The Queue, in which David Beckham briefly became a national hero – before squandering all that hard-earned goodwill by trousering $10million to shill for the Qataris. Meanwhile, queue jumpers Phil and Holly became the most hated couple since Milli Vanilli: as angry villagers across the land lit torches and sharpened pitchforks, the presenters insisted they had been on legitimate work business. In which case, maybe they should have considered changing the name of their show to This Mourning?

But as we throw the last handful of dirt on the coffin of the 2022, it’s hard not to return to the contrasting legacies of the year’s two Elizabeths: one of whom became the longest-serving monarch in British history – and the other of which was famously outlasted by a lettuce. Analysts believe Liz Truss’s brief, disastrous reign cost the British economy somewhere in the region of £30billion. Which, by coincidence, is now also the average price of a lettuce.

Anyway, Happy New Year, I guess.

Paul Kirkley was named Columnist of the Year at the 2021 UK Regional Press Awards. Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.