Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe

It's going to be depressing for everyone, and...

Not paid at all?

Ah.

All right. We've got to do it.

This programme contains some strong language and adult humour

Hello. I'm Charlie Brooker and you're watching 2016 Wipe,

a programme about things that happened during 2016.

Things like this.

The past 12 months have overflowed with harrowing conflict,

terror attacks, celebrity deaths and general upheaval.

2016 has been a year so huge and scary,

I've had to invent a new word to describe it - shitmungus.

Britain sensationally voted to leave the EU.

The vote split the nation into real people versus elitists

and if you don't know which is which, well, former City trader

Nigel Farage is a real person, whereas refugee-loving

Gary Lineker is an elitist, even though,

as this tragic footage reveals, he can't afford clothes.

Former Labour Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, wowed the nation

with his incredible appearances on Strictly Come Dancing.

Not to be outdone, Jeremy Corbyn astonished millions by dancing on Labour's grave.

Following an election campaign in which he insulted and alienated

Mexicans, Muslims, military families, minority groups and women,

Donald Trump rode to victory by appealing to just one white male.

There's a lot to get through but we'll get through it together.

Let's start with January.

As 2016 dawned, there was one cause for optimism,

which was that at least it wasn't 2015 any more.

2015 had left us on our knees, experiencing one dispiriting blow after another, just like your mum.

But 2016 was bound to be better, if only by default, and, sure enough,

it began fairly innocently.

Take a look at this.

You may just be able to make out a puddle.

Oh, goody. I like this sort of news. It's just like news, without the news in it.

Believe it or not, for a fairly long time yesterday,

this very scene became an online sensation.

Yes. Gripping live footage of pedestrians trying to navigate

a big puddle in Newcastle went viral on social media, and soon,

everyone was planning their own puddle-based programming.

We could look forward to the Great British Lake Off,

Splash In The Attic, Welly Addicts, Downpour Abbey, Pooldark,

Dripper Street, the App-rain-tice and, of course, Puddle Fix It.

Ha-ha-ha! Oh, let me have a laugh.

Have you seen the state of this year?

Anyhow, no sooner had it been catapulted to worldwide fame,

than in harrowing scenes,

Newcastle Council wiped the puddle off the face of the road.

Murderers!

And not long after the puddle left us, the world wept an entire ocean,

thanks to some other news.

Unsuspecting Heart FM listeners were among the first to find out what had happened.

HEART FM JINGLE

Right now, 8:30. Here's the latest.

From Global's Newsroom. I'm Fiona Winchester.

-David Cameron has died...

-A-ha-ha!

David Bowie has died after a secret...

Good evening. It is not often we begin a news programme

like this with the death of a rock star.

But David Bowie was no ordinary star and his was no ordinary death.

Didn't fall in a puddle, did he?

Yes. The news sombrely announced that iconic musician David Bowie

had died, leading to a heartfelt outpouring of grief and briefly turning the coverage

into every BBC Four music documentary you've ever seen.

When Ziggy Stardust came out, I was 12 years old.

It said on the back, "play at maximum volume",

so I put my head between two speakers on the floor and did.

Journalist and tinnitus sufferer Paul Mason there.

There was this David Bowie bloke, who was a genius.

He was a pop star and also a spaceman,

and he became the first person to discover there were spiders on Mars.

What was inspiring was how he overcame this massive stutter.

I mean, sometimes, you could still hear it when he sang.

# Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

# Turn and face the strain

# Ch-ch-changes... #

He sang about things no-one had bothered writing songs about before,

like space travel, and fame, and Les Dennis.

# Let's dance... #

-And about salmon fishing.

-# About sound and vision... #

And about someone making love with his eagle.

# Making love with his ego... #

Which is sort of sick, come to think of it.

He had all these different personalities, like Harry Potter,

Peter Cook, Rula Lenska, David Bowie, David BOWie.

I mean, it was like he was on shuffle mode.

You never knew who he was going to be next.

# Ziggy played for time... #

I like Ziggy Stardust and the funky businessman thing he did in the '80s,

but my favourite of all David Bowie's personas has to be Prince.

# ..beautiful to turn me on... #

But obviously, that act died with him.

Bowie was always a trailblazer but in 2016,

he sadly kick-started a hot new trend for celebrities dying.

Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Paul Daniels, Garry Shandling, Ronnie Corbett,

Victoria Wood, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Caroline Aherne, Gene Wilder,

Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs, AA Gill and Ian McCaskill.

They all left us, so if there really is a starman waiting in the sky,

it's probably just because there's a queue up there.

In February, Prime Ministroid David Campbell-Conk

stood outside Number Ten at his silly little podium,

coming out with some boring rubbish about some referendum

that wasn't going to matter.

I believe that Britain will be safer, stronger

and better off in a reformed European Union.

I don't know why they're televising this. Tilt the camera down!

There might be a puddle near his feet. That's real news.

Don't be in any doubt.

This is one of the biggest political moments for years.

Whatever! Remain will win, obviously, so...

In the early stages of the campaign, the Remain side seemed quietly confident,

as if they didn't really need to put their backs into it, because,

in all likelihood, they were going to win.

The hashtag for today is #studentsin.

By contrast, the Leave campaign had grassroots support

from everyday folk such as Michael Gove,

seen here slumming it on a dress-down Friday.

Gove's inclusion was particularly juicy as far as the news was concerned,

because him and Cameron had been confidantes,

so they were watching him closely like he was a rare creature they'd spotted in the wild.

There goes Michael Gove. Was that a difficult decision, Mr Gove?

Oh, look at that. You caught him! 500 points.

It's just like a game, this. Pokemon GOVE!

Days later, Leave bagged an even bigger working-class hero

in the form of horny-handed everyman, Bullingdon Club grandee,

Telegraph columnist and megabucks TV star,

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson,

seen here failing to enter Number 10 in a visual metaphor for his entire year.

Of course, this decision was seen by many, including ITV News,

as less about Bo-J's desire to leave than his desire to lead.

Boris, quite close colleagues of yours do say that they see it as your pitch to be Tory leader.

-No.

-Can you reassure them that's not the case?

It's not, and I want to make one thing absolutely...

Another thing clear... Erm...

Oh! Look out! I think he's crashed. Someone hit him with a shoe.

Whatever happens at the end of this, and I've said this to the...

to the Prime Minister, he's got to stay.

For now, the PM was staying, on his arse, on Andrew Marr's sofa,

where he was having to field questions about his ultra-loyal

Bullingdon pal's defection to the Leave camp.

And I would say to Boris what I say to everybody else.

"I was never near that pig?"

We will be safer, we will be stronger.

"Safer, stronger, better off inside the EU."

Well, of course you do, because that's what everyone thinks.

Mark my words, come June, this will all be over in five minutes.

Queen Lizzo McTwo turned 90 this year, which is impressive by anyone's standards,

and as the news made crystal clear, many were keen to mark the occasion.

The Keep Britain Tidy campaign encouraged Her Maj's subjects

to get out and pick up litter or "Clean For The Queen".

The idea is that we all spruce up our communities this weekend

ahead of the Queen turning 90.

Yeah. Come on, proles! Let's get cleaning!

Despite high-profile support from

Leave campaign mega-patriots Boris Johnson and Michael Gove,

who posed for these delightfully persuasive promo shots,

the campaign proved a little divisive.

Some people thought it was a bit patronising to ask citizens

to put on a little bib and go around picking crap up off the floor

in demeaning scenes like this.

Although, campaign fan and celebrity estate agent Kirstie Thingummy-Posh

disagreed in the face of tough questioning on Good Morning Plebs. I mean Britain.

There have been people saying, "Why should we clean for the Queen?

-"We're not peasants, scrubbing the streets."

-I am. I know my place.

There are always people who don't want to join in.

There are people who are going to whinge about it.

Yeah. And that whingeing takes up valuable cleaning time.

Come on, proles. For Queen and country.

There's a lot to be said for feeling in control.

-We all want to feel in control.

-I'm in control here!

I'm taking back control.

When you go out and you do a litter pick,

you're gathering together with people who all feel as you do.

You've got a common enemy...

-What? Foreigners?

-..that is litter.

-Oh! Yes. Of course.

But, if Clean For The Queen was an unofficial tribute,

the official birthday tribute was even more spectacular.

Here with Something About This Night from his musical,

Finding Neverland, please welcome Gary Barlow.

Oh, good! I love Gary Barlow.

I can't help thinking he's trying to drop the Queen a subtle hint

about knighthoods here.

# Something about this night

# Something about this night... #

Here's something about this knight - he sounds like Sir Elton John.

Do Candle In The Wind!

Actually, probably best if you don't.

# I can feel it

# Something's happening in the air

# Something just beyond compare... #

# Oh, fucking, bloody bloody, yeah! #

The show chiefly consisted of horse displays.

In fact, it had more horse in it than Catherine the Great,

and the Queen loved every minute.

Even if you hated horses, you could entertain yourself

by noting how the stadium slowly filled

with horse shit as the evening wore on.

By the end, it was a right state.

And you know what to do when there's a mess?

Come on, Kirstie Allsopp, come on, Michael Gove.

Look at that horse shit. Go on! Clean For The Queen.

-Get your

-BLEEP

-bibs on. Go on! Do it now. Do it now or it's treason.

This year, to make people laugh and save money,

the BBC brought back loads of old sitcoms like

Steptoe And Son and Are You Being Served?

And a new version of Porridge.

And then they did Fawlty Towers, but they had to change the name,

so they called it The Night Manager instead and hoped no-one would notice.

It looked all glossy and modern but it was the same as Fawlty Towers.

It was still about this tall, nervous bloke who was in charge of a hotel.

Anyway, the big problem was, it wasn't very funny.

Like, in old Fawlty Towers it was always hilarious when the guests got cross with Basil.

I think this is probably the worst hotel we've ever stayed in.

But in The Night Manager, it was just sort of horrible and tense.

Then you know who my family are.

Open the room. Open the room. Which one?

In the proper Fawlty Towers, when Basil went into a room with a sexy lady,

he'd get into a side-splitting misunderstanding.

LAUGHTER

But the Basil in The Night Manager would just end up

earnestly having sex with them.

HE PANTS

When Fawlty Towers Basil finds a dead guest,

it's just the start of a rib-tickling sequence of events,

where he had to keep hiding the body until you're falling about.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. Coming in like that. Sorry.

But when rebooted night manager Basil finds a dead guest

in a room, he just gets all sad,

and he has this intense, emotional meltdown.

Which was nothing like as funny as the sort of meltdowns proper Basil used to have.

LAUGHTER

We've forgotten what comedy is in this country.

Meanwhile, in America, something was going on which I can't ignore any longer in this programme,

try as I might for my own mental wellbeing.

Cue nightmarish, dystopian news footage.

# Enemies of freedom

-# Face the music

-Come on boys, take 'em down

# President Donald Trump knows how to make America great

# Deal from strength or get crushed every time... #

News coverage was increasingly dominated by

retiring wallflower, Donald J Trump.

-Who's going to pay for the wall?

-ALL: Mexico!

-Who?

-ALL:

-Mexico!

Trump seemed completely unelectable, as the news made clear he'd been rude about Mexicans,

rude about Muslims and even rude about a disabled reporter.

You got to see this guy.

"Aah, I don't know what I said! Aah! I don't remember."

The Republicans had plenty of other contenders who,

on the news, look like the kind of president you get in movies,

yet here they were being thrashed by a man who resembles a clingfilm

parcel of Frankfurter meat that's been kicked through a yellow cobweb.

How tough is it to take property from an elderly woman?

Let me talk! Quiet!

Some fought back in equally childish fashion.

Marco Rubio was all over the networks mocking Trump's hand size.

And you know what they say about men with small hands.

Trump wasn't taking that shit, and in unprecedented scenes,

he was seen bragging about the size of his knob on live television.

He referred to my hands - if they're small, something else must be small.

I guarantee you, there's no problem. I guarantee it.

I suppose it's refreshing, really, for a potential president to be this candid.

I mean, we don't know how big other presidents' penises have been

because Mount Rushmore stops at the neck.

Sad vampire Ted Cruz was now Trump's final target.

Mad donkey Trump immediately set about trolling the shit out of him,

firstly by tweeting an unflattering photo of Cruz's wife.

I don't get angry often...

..but you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids,

that'll do it every time.

Donald, you're a snivelling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone.

Feisty scenes.

There was equally tetchy coverage when Trump slagged off Cruz's dad.

Donald Trump alleges that my dad was involved in assassinating JFK.

Lee Harvey Oswald's son there, whining like a snowflake cuck.

At first, the media seem to find this wryly amusing,

smirking throughout Trump's ascent like they were watching an adorable

toddler playing with a power tool without apparently considering

that he might just learn how to switch it on.

Trump was increasingly unstoppable, and even he seemed surprised,

speaking here at a televised event,

where he embraced the host and then mimed he was a wanker.

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK.

Only if it's someone Putin wants you to shoot.

Not all the famous people who died this year were real, you know.

Yes, in the face of a terminal illness, Albert Square stalwart

Peggy Mitchell decided she just couldn't carry on.

Get it? Carry On? It's a reference joke, love.

Rather than suffer the gruelling ongoing indignity of being in EastEnders,

she chose to write herself out of existence for good in a suicide plot,

thereby becoming pretty much the only Londoner who voted to leave.

With her grip on sanity slipping, in her final moments,

Peggy had a vision of old sparring partner Pat Butcher.

I might have known it was you.

I think Pat could have been one of David Bowie's personas,

come to think of it. Ziggy Fag-ash.

In a moving finale, Peggy gobbled down some death pills

and left both the Square

and her beloved boob-headed sons, Grant and Phil.

They're not as young as they used to be.

As you can tell from the moving scenes

in which he found Peggy's body,

Phil's so out of shape he gets exhausted operating a light switch.

HE SOBS BREATHLESSLY

Having come across the prone form of his mother for hopefully the first time in his life,

Phil tried to console himself by reading a letter Peggy

had left him while sitting on the official Albert Square grief bench,

only to finally give up when he remembered he can't read.

HE CRIES OUT

Adding insult to injury for Phil,

Peggy's grave was located a long walk away up a hill

accessible only on foot.

But the BBC had at least given his mum the most BBC send-off in history.

She was buried beneath a Bake Off showstopper.

In June, that pesky referendum was drawing nearer.

Lucky old Team Remain had three secret weapons.

Weapon number one - relatable everyman George Osborne.

All aboard for Britain remaining in the European Union.

Weapon number two - beloved national figurehead David Cameron,

seen here winning over an audience of millennials

in a sparky online debate.

So, I'm voting Remain, but nothing to do with you guys. I hate the Tories.

I'm just going to say, you fucked every fucking thing up in this country.

You've screwed students, you've screwed the disabled, the vulnerable...

Don't forget the pig!

Also popular with young folk, weapon number three - Jeremy Corbyn.

This fiery proponent of Remain made a series of sparky media appearances,

such as the time he appeared on accessible comedy vehicle

The Last Leg to ooze pro-EU enthusiasm like a stone oozes blood.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is "couldn't really care less about the EU",

and ten is, "I'm jumping on the couch like Tom Cruise on Oprah",

how passionate are you about staying in the EU?

Oh, I'd put myself in the upper half of the five to ten,

-so we're looking at seven, seven-and-a-half.

-Oh, not quite...

-Maybe seven.

Facing this outrageously pumped up opposition was the Leave campaign,

which was actually more like two campaigns.

Campaign one was the A-list Vote Leave gang spearheaded

by Clean For The Queeners Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.

Scrupulously polite Michael Gove was out and about brightening up the news considerably,

confidently putting his case for British sovereignty and denying he had any political ambitions.

When Mr Cameron steps down in the future,

are you considering a leadership bid?

-I can tell you, I am absolutely not.

-Couldn't be clearer.

I'm sure I'll never have to refer to this clip ever again.

Meanwhile, Bozza was driving around the country in a bus

with a startling figure printed up the side.

£350 million a week for the NHS?

That's a lot of plasters, and it's printed on the side of a bus,

so British law dictates that this must and will happen.

Although ITV's Tom Bradley seemed notably unimpressed.

Let's deal with your arguments. One of them is on the side of this bus.

"We send £350 million to Europe." We don't, and you know we don't.

-We do.

-No, we don't.

-We do.

-We don't, we don't.

Admit that that figure is grotesquely misleading at best.

I won't, I won't, I won't.

Meanwhile, Leave campaign number two was leave.EU, fronted by Nigel Farage.

Farage had actually quit Ukip last year only to reappear once again,

the human equivalent of a pop-up advert you just can't click away.

He was all over the news, causing controversy by implying a vote to Remain

could risk Cologne-style mass sex attacks occurring in Britain.

Mrs Merkel has made a very big error in allowing a very large number of

young males to come into Germany unaccompanied,

and let's be honest, some of the cultures that they come from

treat women completely differently to our Western values.

Nigel's got no time for anyone who disrespects women.

Well, unless they're important, then he stands in a gold room,

pissing his pants at their locker-room talk,

as you can see from this gaudy souvenir snap.

Meanwhile, the polls were shifting, sometimes putting Leave in the lead.

Team Remain were getting worried, so they started pulling out the stops.

Cameron appeared on Channel 4 News to repeat his "stronger in" mantra

again, but this time in pink face.

I think we are better off, safer and stronger,

as part of a European Union.

Oh, my God, he's off the Cameron pink scale.

Look, this is pumps me up. Right now, he's gone past gammon.

He's going to blow!

Soon, Team Remain was Project Fear, they said if we voted Leave,

there'd be a financial catastrophe, an emergency budget, maybe even a war.

Society would spiral out of control, Brangelina would split up,

the iPhone 7 wouldn't have a headphone jack,

the £5 note would be full of animal fat,

-the Bake Off would

-BLEEP

-off and Ed Balls would dance live on television.

It was all beyond belief.

Well, Boris seemed to think so, as the news made abundantly clear.

All those who prophesy gloom and doom...

..for British businesses, look at...

I say their pants are on fire.

You know you're calling them liars in front of that bus, yeah?

Britain had never gone to war at sea against itself before,

but thanks to the divisive magic of the referendum, that's what happened.

Yes, Nigel Farage bobbed up the Thames accompanied by a flotilla of pro-Leave boats,

but was rudely interrupted when a rival Remain boat,

captained by swearing Live Aid gibbon Bob Geldof,

pulled up alongside to calmly debate the issues in a dignified manner.

Nigel, you're a fraud.

Britain makes more money than any other country in Europe from fishing.

Britain has the second largest quota for fishing in Europe after Denmark.

Yeah, stick with it, the chorus gets catchy.

It was hard to escape a growing sense this was all spiralling out of control.

The next morning, Farage unveiled a contentious poster

depicting a line of Syrian refugees fleeing a war zone.

Ugh, Typical foreigners.

Only been here five minutes and they've already landed a cushy job in advertising.

As Farage posed for snaps, it looked like he was stood at the front of the queue.

A bit like his Huguenot ancestors were when they migrated here.

The poster was headlined "breaking point" and it felt like we were reaching one.

And then...

Tonight, tributes to the Labour MP Jo Cox who's died

after being stabbed and shot on a street in West Yorkshire.

She was 41, married with two young children,

and was elected to Parliament just over a year ago.

-What words did you hear?

-The words that I heard him say was, "Britain first" or, "Put Britain first."

When asked his name, the man in the dock said,

"My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain."

This was the first politically motivated killing of a sitting MP

in decades, and it stunned and appalled both sides of the EU debate

and the nation as a whole.

Come the day of the vote itself, opinion appeared to have swung back Remain's way.

Obviously, because Remain was going to win.

BELL CHIMES

As the polls closed, Remain seemed buoyant,

while prominent Leave types already appeared to be conceding defeat.

-No, I'm not conceding.

-Yeah, you are. You might as well.

-Loser!

-My sense of this is that the government's registration scheme,

getting 2 million voters on, the 48-hour extension,

may be what tipped the balance. I hope I'm wrong.

Well, there's no point in me staying up for this,

the result's not in doubt, so I'm off to bed.

Over there, in the corner of the studio.

Night-night.

BIRDSONG

HE YAWNS I slept in my clothes.

I wonder how much Remain won by.

This will be a victory for real people,

a victory for ordinary people,

a victory for decent people.

Hi. Yeah, sorry, I think there's something wrong with my television.

It's showing images and sounds from a universe I don't recognise.

We will have done it without having to fight,

without a single bullet being fired.

Let June 23rd go down in our history as our Independence Day.

CHEERING

By contrast, Dobbo Cambo did the walk of shame to his podium and handed in his notice.

I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger,

safer and better off inside the European Union.

Yeah, you can stop saying that now, mate.

As Cameron retreated inside to lick his wounds, across town,

Boris Johnson stepped out into Brexit Britain to taste his new-found popularity.

-CROWD BOOS

-Shame on you, Boris!

You're a parasite, Boris Johnson!

Even though they'd won a surprise victory,

Boris and Gove were acutely aware millions of people hadn't voted Leave

so they were at pains not to look too triumphalist and pulled sort of

sick and haunted expressions instead, which was thoughtful of them,

and Boris struck a conciliatory tone.

This does not mean that the United Kingdom

will be in any way less united...

..nor indeed does it mean that it will be any less European.

-Or any less

-un-BEEP.

It quickly turned out, courtesy of cheery breakfast shows,

that some of the promises made during the campaign weren't worth the bus they were written on.

The £350 million a week we send to the EU,

which we will no longer send to the EU,

can you guarantee that's going to go to the NHS?

No, I can't, and I would never have made that claim.

HE SPLUTTERS

Christ! Well, I guess it wasn't his bus.

Anyway, what's going to happen with immigration?

Come on, CNN, be responsible. Ask one of the Leavers.

Are you then saying

that this immigration is going to be much lighter...

-So, our issue...

-..than you all promised?

I have never, ever made any commitment on numbers, ever.

HE SPLUTTERS At least there's some sort of plan, yeah?

Where's that Faisal Islam on Sky News?

He's talked to one of the Leavers about it, yeah?

I said, "Where's the plan? Can we see the Brexit plan now?"

"There is no plan.

"The Leave campaign don't have a post-Brexit plan.

"Number 10 should've had a plan."

HE SPLUTTERS AND LAUGHS

Everything felt a bit upside down.

Even the news, which normally tells you things they know,

was reduced to simply listing things they didn't know.

We don't know when the formal process of withdrawing will begin.

We don't know if the French and the Germans

will lock us out of the single market.

We don't know who will be Prime Minister.

We don't even know who the leader of the opposition will be.

We don't know if it will be another general election this year,

and we don't know if the UK will actually hold together as a country.

Join us after the break for everything we don't know about the weather.

In the aftermath of the results, some people simply couldn't comprehend what was happening,

particularly people in the London media bubble.

Well, obviously, I didn't, but why did some people vote Leave?

What can I learn from them?

To find out, I've got a Leave voter here in the studio with me. Hello. You voted Leave.

-What's wrong with you?

-I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with me.

Oh, hang on, hang on. I wanted a northern one.

A proper one. Is this the best we could do? This?

All right, fine, OK. Go on.

-For years, the concerns of people like me...

-Do you know what concerns me?

-Your racism.

-I'm not racist.

-"Oh, oh, oh! I'm not racist, but... Oh!"

This is you. Oh! Eugh!

You make me sick! Unlike me, you are racist, and you're simple,

and you're stupid, and you've ruined this country.

Do you know how much Nespresso coffee pods are going to cost me now?

-A

-BLEEP

-fortune! Why don't you think before you act?!

Not that the metropolitan elite

was entirely imagining the role of xenophobia.

Following the vote, an apparent spike in hate crimes was recorded,

and there were plenty of examples of people who had apparently voted

Leave, in the belief Leave was actually an instruction

aimed at anyone they considered "not one of us", as the news made clear.

It's all about immigration.

Right? It's not about trade or Europe or anything like that.

It's all about immigration.

It's to stop the Muslims from coming into this country.

-Simple as that.

-See, now that's what I'm after.

Why didn't we book him?

Ever since Jeremy Clarkson punched his way out of his BBC contract

and swanned off to Amazon along with his sidekicks,

viewers were wondering how the rebooted Top Gear might fare.

But before the new series had even made it to our screens,

it was already grinding people's gears.

The new presenter of the BBC's Top Gear, Chris Evans,

has apologised unreservedly after scenes for his new series

were filmed near the Cenotaph yesterday.

Yes, a stunt in which a muscle car did doughnuts

40 metres from the Cenotaph prompted fuming headlines.

Say what you like about Jeremy Clarkson,

he wouldn't pull doughnuts in front of a revered war memorial.

Unless it was somewhere like Argentina,

then he'd drop a caravan full of Mexicans onto it.

And it would be hilarious!

Instead, this blurry amateur footage

of The One Where Joey Disrespects The Fallen

was so offensive it was displayed repeatedly

on websites and news channels.

Unless he's drawing a poppy in skidmarks, that is disgraceful.

Soon, redtop whipping boy Chris Evans stumbled into the cameras

to apologise and promised we'd never see the obscene scenes we'd just seen.

That footage will definitely not go on the air, no question about it.

-And top military brass were also grateful.

-I'm very glad that...

..the BBC have both apologised for what happened

and effectively indicated they won't be screening it.

Quite right, they won't.

This will never see the light of day.

Weeks later, the show itself made its BBC Two debut,

and with the nation's papers wishing the new presenter well,

the scene was set for Evans and co to put criticism to bed

by knocking the first show right out of the park.

-Please welcome Matt le Blanc.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

As well as Matt the Blank, it had everything the old Top Gear had,

except Clarkson, May and Hammond, and several million viewers,

so something had to give.

We're bringing you some news just into us here at the BBC that

Chris Evans has resigned from the television programme Top Gear.

Yes, in a shocking, impossible-to-predict development,

Evans quit and experts immediately jumped in front of eager

news cameras to explain what exactly had gone wrong.

Top Gear, with the new series, made a huge mistake,

a huge mistake on the first show that they aired.

-It wasn't very good.

-Oh, that's their mistake!

If only they'd made it good!

Ironically, the critics say, after its poor start,

the show had become pretty good by the end of the series,

though most of the good bits did not involve Chris Evans.

Hmm, just like life, really.

This year, just in case you got bored during those four or five

seconds each day when you're not already staring at your phone,

a game came along to fill the gap.

Yes, Pokemon GO,

the augmented reality creature-collecting sensation

was all the rage with both children and adult-sized children.

Soon, avid players were scouring local parks and areas of wasteland,

trying to pick up exotic creatures like your dad did in the 1980s,

except, unlike him,

they were desperately trying to fill their balls.

I'm implying your father had sex with strangers in parks.

The game had been a big hit in the US and was about to appear in Britain,

and as chirpy Good Morning Britain made clear,

even Piers Morgan couldn't wait.

I'm looking to see if I can get the app on my phone - everyone has it.

-You can't get it here yet.

-I've got a proxy to get it from America.

-Probably not allowed to do that, am I?

-Probably not.

But I'm sure you would never do anything illegal with a phone(!)

The craze was getting out of hand and was also a safety hazard.

Watch where you're going, there's a lamppost there.

As alarming footage showed,

mass Pokemobs were erupting whenever a rare creature was discovered.

Thank God that's the only time this year we'll see huge crowds of

Americans blindly following a ridiculous monster.

Nevertheless, Pokemon GO was a positive game, and as the news made clear,

it was encouraging people to get out of the house and make new friends.

Dead ones.

I woke up this morning and I wanted to go get a water Pokemon,

so I just got up and went for my little walk.

She instead found a body lying face down in the river.

To check he was dead, she had to poke him and go.

Sticking with tech, this was the year VR went mainstream.

For one thing, it formed the basis of a task on The Apprentice.

It was shocking when candidates met a pixelated Lord Sugar inside a

-vector-based boardroom.

-Good morning.

Welcome to the future.

Oh, no, I hate boss levels.

And there were illuminating scenes when snooker legend

Ronnie O'Sullivan got to grips with some very immersive gaming tech.

-Oh, Jesus!

-Oh, Ron!

-BLEEP

-hell!

-That is mental.

-Did you try to lean on the table?

-Yeah.

-BLEEP!

-That's scary.

A little musical interlude now, as I pretend my desk is a piano.

JAUNTY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

Anyway, back to Brexit.

Ever since David Cameron had given in his notice,

the race was on to find us a new, improved Prime Minister.

The frontrunner was Boris Johnson who'd stabbed his friend Cameron in the back to get this far.

Of course, his pal Michael Gove was completely out of the running,

I mean, we all remember the convincing moment he'd said this on Sky News.

Are you considering a leadership bid?

Honestly, I can tell you I'm absolutely not.

Three, two, one...

Just hours before the former Mayor of London was expected to declare

he was running, his Leave campaign ally, Michael Gove,

stepped in and stunned Westminster by announcing he'd decided to run for leader himself.

This was a move of Machiavellian genius on Gove's part,

leaving him expertly positioned as the shiftiest,

least trusted man in politics.

Boris now said he wouldn't stand for leader after all.

I have concluded that person cannot be me.

With Bozza gone,

the remaining contenders were lined up on the news like unlockable

character options in the worst iPad game of all time.

In the first round, the Fox was culled. Typical Tory move.

Then Crabb stepped aside. Well, he is a Crabb.

That left human Spitting Image puppet Gove,

Nurse Ratched Theresa May,

and a sort of dark side Mary Berry figure called Andrea...Leadsom...

Previously so unheard of, she probably had to look herself up on Wikipedia

when she heard she was running.

Come the first round, Gove turned out to be as popular as a turd in a soft play.

I am naturally disappointed that I haven't been able to make it through

to the final round of this leadership contest.

So, now we were down to Theresa May and Andre...

Andrea Leadsom, who had amassed a loyal band of followers

that had admired her every move since they had first heard of her five minutes ago.

-What do we want?

-ALL: Leadsom for leader!

-When do we want it?

-ALL: Now!

But wait! She immediately wrecked it all with an explosive interview

claiming being a parent made her a better candidate than May.

And that did for her ambitions.

I am therefore withdrawing from the leadership election.

Well, she's out, so that was the last we were ever going to hear of...oh!

Andre... Andrea Leads...thing.

Now the leading Leavers had left, only pro-Remain Theresa May remained among the remains,

trying to operate the levers.

But first, we all had to say a fond farewell to David Cameron.

Now, as we have pointed out before on this show,

as the exhaustive news coverage shows,

Campbell-Nose has a habit of nonchalantly wandering off

the moment he's had enough of a situation.

And in his final seconds, he didn't disappoint.

I expect to go to the Palace and offer my resignation,

so we'll have a new Prime Minister in that building behind me

by Wednesday evening. Thank you very much.

Is this a sad day, Prime Minister?

# Doo-doo, doo-doo. #

Right.

Now the decks were clear and our shiny new Prime Minister,

T-May the First, went to Buck House to meet the real Queen

and immediately won her over by walking in doing a Madness nutty dance.

Meanwhile, outside, Sky News sat reverently reporting

the great Royal hook-up when they were suddenly interrupted

by what I can only describe as a typical modern tit.

-Because, as I say, when you're...

-We're on TV, guys! Jack Jones TV!

Check me out, Facebook! Woohoo! Tiggle wiggle-wiggle!

There's someone who will never be Prime Minister.

Brazil hosted the Olympics this August, and straightaway,

it was one of the most colourful games in history,

and the coverage was vibrant from beginning to end from the eye-popping pazazz

of the thrilling opening ceremony

to the shimmering bile green of the pool.

It was a great Olympics for team GB.

There were incredible scenes as Muslim immigrant Mo Farah

stormed to a record-breaking victory cheered on by 48% of the country.

In fact, following a series of stunning victories,

Britain's athletes were feverishly hoarding gold,

which wasn't simply good for national morale but was also sound economic advice

following the collapse of the pound.

And that wasn't the only Great British contest.

There was this tent-based cookery programme thing

called The Great British Bake Off.

It was like One Born Every Minute for cakes,

like you saw loads of cakes being born and people getting emotional,

only it was more equal opportunities because men got to give birth

to cakes as well as women.

Not out of their bums or anything, that would affect the taste,

but out of ovens.

Even though it was all about baking, they never did baked potatoes,

which is a missed opportunity,

because a baked potato is the single hardest thing there is to cook.

It had all these great people on it, like Sue Melon and Lady Penelope,

and Hollywood Paul, and it became like a family,

except you genuinely loved them.

But then it turned out it isn't run like a normal village fete.

There's this big company who make it, and they wanted more money.

But the BBC wouldn't cough up.

Everyone was almost as cross as they got the time that lady dropped that cat in the bin.

The Great British Bake Off is to move to Channel 4.

The programme belonged on the BBC One because

that's as British as it gets when you think about it.

The other channels are foreign compared to BBC One,

like ITV looks all snazzy and stupid, so it's sort of America.

Channel 4 is all weird and arty and sort of pervy, like, I don't know,

Holland or something.

Sky gets beamed down from space,

so that's not British, that's fucking Martian.

So BBC One is the only proper British channel left

apart from Dave.

Dunno why people were so worried about Channel 4 taking the Bake Off,

I mean, they handle programming sensitively.

Take their recent spin on Blind Date, Naked Attraction,

a relentless foray into titillation and bumillation in which singletons

weed out potential partners based on their body parts alone.

We need to see the bottom half of the bodies, please.

-Oh!

-Basically, it was just like Deal Or No Deal,

but with six anonymous penises instead of one called Noel.

It was the height of romance as contestants wound up inspecting genitals

like farmers at a livestock auction.

I'm a bit concerned because I don't think I'd be able to sit on him.

Cos he looks a bit bigger than me.

And that wasn't the only contest where you had to weigh up

which prick you thought you could best withstand.

Labour leader and plant-ducker Jeremy Corbyn was under attack from his own party.

Some felt he didn't even want the ultimate top job,

as a testy exchange showcased by Channel 4 News made clear.

-Do you really ever want to be Prime Minister?

-Of course.

I want to lead this party. I want to lead this party in order

to put forward an alternative and lead this party to win the election.

I haven't heard the phrase, "I want to be Prime Minister".

You first heard it now. Of course I want to be.

-No, no, say it.

-I've just said it to you, OK?

-"I want to be Prime Minister."

-I've just said it to you, please.

Many of his own MPs felt hard left Corbyn had actually been soft Remain,

thereby helping the right and the Leave campaign,

which they believed wasn't right, so they started to leave, left,

right and centre, and as more of them left, the more he remained,

saying staying was his right, which left the left in a right state.

Following a vote of no confidence,

it was a Labour's turn to have a leadership contest,

and the tetchy Grand Moff was up against Owen Smith,

a man so dull he made Ed Miliband look like David Miliband.

A huge challenge for Brexit-era Labour is proving it's in touch with real people,

so to test the contenders' everyday cred,

Victoria Derbyshire showed Smith and Corbyn pictures of famous folk

to see if they knew who they were.

Can you name, Owen Smith, who is in this photo?

Taylor Swift and...

-..is that Justin Bieber?

-Well done. He's absolutely right.

APPLAUSE OK, good start.

Now, for a bonus point, who the hell is this?

Jeremy Corbyn, do you know who these two men are? And which one is which?

I cannot name them, I'm really sorry.

You think that's tough, try getting him to recognise Ant and Semitism.

But if Ant and Dec proved tricky, public transport was even trickier.

Yes, during a fact-finding mission to Newcastle,

during which he hoped to find out who Ant and Dec are,

Corbyn ran into trouble when he found himself confronted by far fewer seats than expected,

which you'd think he would be used to by now.

In heart-rending scenes,

he was forced to sit on the floor in the twisty bit

that stinks of bog and make a convincingly spontaneous statement.

Today, this train is completely ram-packed.

The reality is there's not enough trains. We need more of them.

But his sit-down protest soon led to a stand-up row,

And a bemused reaction from Sky News.

Now, this is a bit weird.

A row is developing over claims made by Jeremy Corbyn

that a train service he used between London and Newcastle was ram-packed.

Yes, Virgin Trains released CCTV footage

showing there were actually no rams on board the train,

and not only that,

Corbyn had apparently walked past several empty seats

in order to make his point.

I'm surprised they didn't bollock him for having a forged ticket.

Look at that! The sizing's at least three centimetres off.

In the end, even traingate couldn't derail Corbyn.

Eventually, when the vote was tallied, Owen Smith was soundly defeated.

He now looks set to spend the rest of his political career toiling in irrelevance,

in complete obscurity, alongside Jeremy Corbyn.

Meanwhile, in America, Trump and Clinton had become

the official candidates of their respective parties.

The standout moment of the Democratic convention was a moving

speech from the Muslim parents of a fallen soldier,

scolding Trump for his comments on Muslims.

Donald Trump, have you even read the United States Constitution?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I will gladly lend you my copy.

Has it got pictures in it? If not, I'll level with you - I don't think he'll bother.

Trump responded by belittling the Khans in a shocking interview.

If you look at his wife, she was standing there,

she had nothing to say, she probably...

Maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.

Traditionally in America, attacking grieving families

is about as big a vote winner as wiping your bum on a live baby.

Then in a startling televised speech, he said this.

Isis is honouring President Obama.

He is the founder of Isis.

-Sorry, what? Of Isis?

-He's the founder of Isis.

-What, you mean metaphorically, or...?

-He founded Isis!

Oh, right, you actually mean this mental stuff your mouth is saying?

By now, Trump was conducting a voyage

to the bottom of the sea in polling terms,

but then disaster struck for Hillary as she caught pneumonia

and alarming footage emerged of her apparently almost collapsing into her car.

No, I'm not taking her, mate. Not in that state. 50 quid cleaning charge.

Soon, Trump enjoyed a sizeable bounce in the polls,

so all eyes were trained anxiously on the first debate.

But Trump's performance was underwhelming,

something he blamed on his microphone,

which had undermined him by conveying everything he had said.

No wonder you've been fighting Isis your entire adult life.

That's...that's...go to the... Please, the fact-checkers.

And he was about to have even worse luck with mics.

Donald Trump was doing really well in his campaign,

like, he hadn't put a foot wrong,

and then suddenly this video came out

that put him in a totally new light.

He didn't seem as nice as you thought he was

when he was just shouting about Muslims and Mexicans.

The bloke he had said this stuff to was this sort of snickering gimp boy

called Billy Bush,

and everyone was so disgusted with him, he got fired.

NBC TV network has sacked Billy Bush as host of The Today Show.

But there was literally nothing anyone could do to punish Donald Trump.

They had literally no choice but to go ahead and vote for him.

After the tape appeared,

all these women came out to say he'd done creepy things to them, too,

but there wasn't really any evidence that he'd do stuff like that,

apart from the recording of him saying he did.

And that was just his word against his.

A whole slew of Republican congressmen and women,

senators and others have come out saying that Donald Trump should stand down.

Well, there's no coming back from this.

Trump's had it. H-A-D-D-I-T, had it.

But he hadn't. As a street-fighting carnival strongman,

Trump operates the Chicago way.

You pull a knife, he pulls a gun.

You send one of his to the hospital, he sends one of yours to the morgue.

And whenever an accusation was flung at him, he hit back twice as hard.

With his little hands.

True enough, just before the second debate, Trump arranged a press event

conference full of women claiming Bill Clinton was a sex monster and rapist.

Yeah, you know, it was around here the background giggles had really

drained out of the campaign.

The whole thing was depressing and gruelling,

and as the second debate opened,

as the news noted, the mood was incredibly sour.

For the first time ever in a presidential debate,

not even a suggestion of a handshake.

That's odd, Trump's normally keen to shake hands.

-I've seen the tape.

-"Oh, I don't know what I said! Ahh!

-"I don't remember..."

-Throughout the debate,

a glowering Trump followed Clinton around like a terracotta stalker.

It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump

is not in charge of the law in our country.

-Because you'd be in jail.

-Secretary Clinton...

APPLAUSE AND GASPS

It was another negative performance with yet more bad consequences for The Donald.

Paul Rand has effectively, on a call with other Republican leaders,

pulled the plug on Donald Trump.

Oh, well, he's super finished now.

I mean he was finished before, but now he's Harambe finished.

We can all rest easy. Mark my words. Donald Trump will never, ever, ever be president.

November brought us plenty of top-flight TV.

Planet Earth II provided a cheery distraction from the state

of the world with soothing footage of creatures dying in godless oblivion.

HE LAUGHS

Ed Balls made the nation chuckle with a string of

hilarious performances on Strictly Come Dancing.

Sadly, his ascent to the top was cut short after shocking footage emerged

of him grabbing a woman by the pussy.

There were heart-warming scenes as Danny Dyer appeared on Who Do You Think You Are?

-or as he calls it, "Who do you think you

-BLEEP

-well are?

-"You

-BLEEP

-want some, do you? Come on, then, you

-BLEEP!"

It can't be.

A direct descendent...

..from Edward III.

Danny discovered he was distantly related to Edward III.

Personally I always had him down as something of a Richard III.

Bit of Cockney rhyming slang there.

This show isn't just for the metropolitan elite.

OK, who am I kidding? It is.

Also in November, having vanquished Chris Evans,

Clarkson and co popped up on Amazon with their rival show,

The Grand Tour,

in which Jezza immediately made the most of his new Beebless freedom.

It's very unlikely I'm going to be fired now,

because we're on the internet.

Which means I could pleasure a horse.

Bet you could take it from 0 to 60 gallons in 4.3 seconds.

You'd never be allowed to say that on the BBC.

Mainly, though, The Grand Tour was an excuse for the wheelbound Goodies

to flex some overpowered new budgetary muscles.

Anyway, the BBC clearly now has to compete with streaming services and

their massive blockbuster budgets,

which is why I'm talking to you now in CinemaScope and blending these banknotes.

BLENDER WHIRS

Ever since Britain had voted for Brexit,

people have been squabbling over exactly what that Brexit should mean,

so haunted art gallery owner Theresa May had to show up on the news explaining it.

-Brexit means Brexit.

-And then keep explaining it.

-Brexit means Brexit.

-Over and over again.

As I have said, Brexit means Brexit.

But it turned out some people had misheard her,

and thought Brexit meant something else.

I respect the mandate she has,

she said earlier in the week that Brexit means breakfast...

And now people were worrying about the impact of breakfast...

The Government is hurtling towards, yes, a chaotic breakfast.

..while others were talking it up.

Mark my words, we will make breakfast...

-Brexit a success.

-Things were getting farcical.

But luckily, Theresa May was on hand once again to remind us just what Brexit means.

I've been clear that Brexit means Brexit.

But then the conversation turned to different types of Brexit.

-Like soft Brexit...

-Soft Brexit.

-..and hard Brexit.

-Hard Brexit.

-What next?

Stealth Brexit? Trans Brexit? Reverse Brexit?

Virtual Brexit? Sea-salted caramel Brexit?

The whole thing was just chaos.

So then her great grey Majesty had to come out and clear it all up once and for all.

People talk about the sort of Brexit that there's going to be,

is it hard, soft? Is it grey, white?

-Grey or white? What the

-BLEEP?

Actually we want a red, white and blue Brexit.

That is the right Brexit for the United Kingdom.

So, there you go. Red, white and blue Brexit.

I mean, God knows what that is, but it's a patriot, so it's all right by us.

And anyone who disagrees is talking Britain down.

Before the referendum,

the people who wanted us to leave Europe where angry all the time.

We were being ruled by unelected people in Brussels

and I don't like it.

And the good thing about the Brexit result was that afterwards they stayed angry.

We voted to come out, we should come out.

Like it or not, that was the democratic decision.

But now all the Remainers are angry, too.

-CHANTING: Shame on you.

-So it brought the whole country together.

There was this big row about Particle 50.

You'd think if Particle 50 was that important, it would be Particle 1.

They should have renumbered it so we'd know.

Theresa May had wanted to start Brexit without a Commons vote,

but a group of campaigners mounted a legal challenge.

You could see the papers got really angry about that, and quite right, too.

Some of them printed these useful guides

to who you should hate on their front pages.

I'm a people, and I'm sick of having my will defied by the likes of them.

Some of the Remain camp said,

even though it was a simple yes or no question,

we got the answer wrong,

so we should have another go with a second referendum.

And they had a point. Like, basically,

loads of people only voted Leave as a protest,

because they'd never been listened to, but that's not a proper reason,

so we should ignore those idiots,

chuck their ballots in the bin and do it again properly,

like in a real democracy.

Do you remember, a few years ago, when people describe absolutely everything as "meh"?

Everywhere you'd look on the internet, there it was, "meh" -

a big bored shrug.

We moaned that everything was sort of mediocre and bland.

Not any more. No, now everything is either shit or brilliant and there's no in-between,

and everyone is furious.

-Stick your head in the internet now and it's like a

-BLEEP

-screaming convention.

Black ants versus red ants.

It's as if everyone's been radicalised, and therefore,

in Brexit Britain, you're either a knuckle-dragging racist or a metropolitan elitist.

Those are the only two roles available.

Sorry. But we know those are caricatures.

Out here, away from the fantasy hellscape that lives in here,

most of us are bland and "meh" and reasonable.

And I miss it. I miss "meh".

How did we get so polarised?

Well, some people say it's thanks to "the bubble".

Not a nice bubble, like in an Aero,

but a bad bubble that goes round your brain and stops new ideas getting in.

-The echo chamber.

-Echo chamber?

-Echo chamber?

-ALL: Echo chamber.

Eventually the bubbles around people

got so big that they needed their own news services

so that people trapped inside could keep up with the sort of stuff

they'd like to imagine was happening outside.

This fake news was miles better than normal news.

I mean, if you tell me that Hillary Clinton's been a bit hypocritical

about the transpacific partnership agreement...

I wouldn't even hear the end of the sentence.

It's so boring, I'd just be looking at your teeth and judging you.

But if you say she's part of a paedo ring

based in a pizza restaurant, I'll remember that forever.

Speaking of which, let's head back to America.

Polling day had arrived in the USA,

and despite a last-minute setback for Clinton over e-mails,

all the polls indicated she was set for victory.

And not just in the opinion polls, the general feeling was good, too.

All the experts agreed she had it in the bag.

Clinton probably will be the United States' next president.

It's basically a done deal. No point staying up to watch it.

I mean, imagine... Imagine if Trump did win.

Shows like this would be pointless.

People like me would be out of a job anyway.

I'd be yesterday's prick. HE LAUGHS

Anyway, I'll see you in the morning.

HE YAWNS

BIRDSONG

Oh, that's better.

I slept like a baby.

I think I'll just put the news on and watch Hillary's victory speech.

Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States.

What started off as unlikely, impossible, is now reality.

He said he was always a winner.

This did not come without controversy...

GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

MUSIC: Ms Jackson by OutKast

All things considered, you could be forgiven for thinking it might be the apocalypse.

But what is an apocalypse anyway?

Well, here to find out,

it's our very own Philomena Cunk with one of her Moments Of Wonder.

A million years ago, Nostradamus predicted the world would end in a huge mess called a "pocalypse".

The word "pocalypse" is posh dictionary code for the end of days,

and the end of days means sunset, which happens all the time.

That's probably why the world didn't end just because Nostradamus said it would.

But Nostradamus wasn't the only person who reckoned the pocalypse was coming.

As well as inventing Minecraft,

the ancient Mayan civilisation predicted the world as we knew it would end in 2012.

But luckily it turned out just to be Ceefax that ended.

And that's only the whole world if you're over 60 and housebound.

Another pocalypse was predicted by Mother Shipton,

a mystic from Yorkshire who lived in a cave.

Which at the time was better than living in Yorkshire,

just like it also is now. She wrote...

A claim which has been recently been debunked by experts through a careful process

of looking around and seeing the world still here.

'The good news is the world hasn't ended yet.

'The bad news is scientists say it one day definitely will.'

But what sort of ending will it have? A sad ending with a disaster?

Or a happy one with a song?

'To find out, I spoke to expert science man and former D:Ream keyboardist, Dr Brian Cox.'

How will the world end?

Well, the sun will run out of fuel in about 4 billion years or so,

and actually, before that, it will begin to swell up, expand,

and so we think the Earth will get incinerated.

Do you think we might be able to do something about it?

-Stop it being incinerated?

-Yeah, stop it being...

Or the sun burning the Earth.

Can't we put it out with a big hose or something?

It's an inevitable consequence of the laws of nature.

You're pleased with that, are you? You're happy with that. You can live with that.

Well, there's nothing I can do. Also, the Andromeda Galaxy is going to hit us.

-The Andromeda Galaxy? A whole galaxy is going to hit us?

-Yeah.

-SHE SIGHS

-On about the same timescale, actually.

So, as the sun runs out of fuel, expands and incinerates the Earth,

a galaxy of 400 billion stars is going to collide with us.

You're much gloomier than I expected.

Because you're quite smiley.

Well, yeah, it's quite a long time in the future.

You said, "Things can only get better."

So how can we trust anything you ever say now?

That is a gross misunderstanding of the laws of nature.

It's one of the most misleading and scientifically inaccurate pop songs that's ever been written.

-Catchy, though.

-Yeah, but it's just inaccurate.

Scientifically inaccurate. Things get worse.

So, after the universe ends, there'll be nothing.

It depends what you mean by "after the universe ends..."

When it's exploded.

-Is not going to explode. It's going to, we think...

-Melt.

-..carry on expanding.

-Right, and then...

-Forever.

Well, that will be fine, won't it? We need the space.

You get to the point where if it carries on doing that,

then galaxies get ripped apart and then solar systems get ripped apart,

and then even planets get ripped apart,

-and even atoms get ripped apart.

-But, so what?

All the stars will die, even all the black holes that are left,

the final sort of end point of the most massive stars will evaporate away.

So, can we... Could we fall down a black hole?

You could fall into one.

Is that the same? Because I heard that you could be...

You know, this is one way that the world could end,

is that we're all just sucked off through a hole.

-It's...

-I mean, that must be terrible.

Can you imagine what it would feel like to be sucked off through a hole?

Yeah.

'2016 might have looked like the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine,

'but at least right now the pocalypse hasn't come, and who knows?

'Maybe it never will.'

But there's no point sitting around worrying about the pocalypse

when what we should be really scared of is Armageddon.

'Next time on Moments Of Wonder,

I'll be asking - if air is really there,

'how come we can't grab it?'

As December arrived, the world grappled with the notion that,

despite losing the popular vote by several million,

the man who had bragged about grabbing women by the pussy

was about to get his finger on the red button.

As the news expertly relayed footage of furious protests,

there were initially confusing signals from the President elect

as he seemed to row back on some of his pre-election promises.

Perhaps most shocking of all, having said he would be tough on terrorism,

he met with the founder of Isis and even shook his hand.

The unpredictadonald was also spewing angry tweets and stuffing his administration with hardliners.

Many feared Trump might now pursue a white supremacist agenda,

although from the looks of him, it's going to be more of a tangerine supremacist agenda.

So-called outsider Trump also appointed generals and corporate CEOs to major positions,

including a guy with links to Putin.

This was especially eye-opening as the CIA was claiming Russian hackers

had deliberately aided Trump's ascent,

something Trump himself was eager to jump in front of the news cameras to pooh-pooh.

Once they hack, if you don't catch them in the act,

you're not going to catch them.

They have no idea if it is Russia or China or somebody,

it could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace.

Yeah, they could be anywhere in the world.

I mean, Moscow, Vladivostok, St Petersburg,

we'll probably never know.

Let's face it, 2016 has been atrocious. For many reasons.

Appalling terror attacks, unending conflict,

celebrity deaths, widespread polarisation,

fear, paranoia, despair, Honey G.

You know what? From now on I'm just going to watch fake news.

It's much better. It's got its own channel now. It's great, watch.

This is Fake BBC News. The headlines tonight.

The world of politics is stunned as President-elect Donald Trump is

revealed to be a persona created by the musician David Bowie.

Bowie, who is still alive, plans to tour as Trump next spring,

alongside rapper Kanye West.

All differences over this summer's Brexit vote put aside as scientists

discover the existence of Particle 51,

which renders the process of leaving the EU

both simple and physically enjoyable.

Well, we knew there were 50 particles,

but this changes everything.

It makes everything I said about the apocalypse complete bullshit.

Bake Off back on.

A last-minute deal sees the Great British Bake Off return to BBC One,

but Paul Hollywood won't be returning,

having already signed a contract for Channel 4's Naked Attraction.

I want to lie on him. I feel like he'd be the best cuddler.

And 2016 has all been a dream.

You've been asleep the whole time and are about to wake up,

'dribbling slightly onto a pillow.'

Oh, it's still January.

I just dreamt about a horrible year.

I wonder what's really happening.

Now, take a look at this.

Oh, what a lovely puddle.

Well, that's all we've got time for this year.

I'll see you presently.

Till next time, do take care and go away.