Wow, you came back! Extraordinary! Well, you’ve already seen what made 2011 somewhat exciting for the first half of the year, but what about the second half? Did anything funny happen?
Well hardly. But here’s what actually did happen…

David and Victoria Beckham had their first daughter and decided to call it, of call things, Harper Seven Beckham. While I’m sure it’s beautiful for them, the world was quite shocked. So I took you on a journey of people with better names. Nowadays, people are still trumping their naming convention, changing their names to things like Pink Sparkly And All Things Nice – I’m not even joking.
Burt the Sign Language Dog went missing. I’m not quite sure who has a heart that’s dead enough to steal a dog that communicates with deaf children (probably Dr. Evil after smoking 40 a day for half his life), but as far as I know this dog’s still nowhere to be found. Poor Burt Reynolds. Sadface.
I also had my first ECG in July. That’s always scary. Although I turned myself into the bionic man for all of 10 minutes in my mind. They had to shave patches of hair off on my legs and chest to get the pads in the right place, and you can still see the gap now, a good 4 months on. Damn you, NHS!
The UK decided it was a good idea to riot. Funnily enough, not everyone thought it was a great idea and decided to mock those who were, like myself. Hah, look at this pillock with a parasol. Suppose it’s one up from photographing yourself and posting it on Twitter or something…
The Internet wanted Sartalics – italics that lean the other way to denote sarcastic messages – to become standard in word processing software and the like. Still no nearer that goal, we venture forward undeterred. Because it totally would be a pain to implement…
ITV thought the gameshow Red or Black was a good idea. Without even clicking that link you know I didn’t think the same, don’t you. But go on, click it. Clicked it? Yeah, you were right. It was dire. But at least we know that Simon Cowell can do something the whole nation despises, not just the educated folk.
Cone-ing became a thing. Not planking, nor owling, nor batmanning. Cone-ing. The act of grabbing a takeaway ice cream cone by the dessert end. Not only was it a waste of perfectly good ice-cream, it was totally ruined by Justin Bieber cone-ing. I don’t mind Bieber killing that one off though…
I went to go and see my first football game in Bournemouth with them against Yeovil in a cup match. Ash was the only one with any sort of affiliation at that game out of us guys who went, but I kind of enjoyed shouting obscenities at people I have no idea whether they’re usually that crap or not. Entertaining nonetheless.
We went to Bristol to watch a game of Deal or No Deal Live which, as I’m sure you’re well aware, was a really odd experience. I found myself caring about stuff I wouldn’t really care about at all. Oh no, that woman opened a box that had a large amount of money written on the inside of it! Woe is me!
Snoop Dogg invited a random bloke who grew a massive swede backstage at one of his concerts. While Charlie Sheen took the celeb “what the hell is he smoking?” award for 2011, Snoop Dogg comes a close second. Kudos for inviting the world’s most honest farmer for an interview though, Sky News. You get what you ask for.
2011 was also a year for some really odd dreams. Cold Fountain Eliminated was one of those weird dreams which I dramatized. Still to this day I have absolutely no idea what that means, but hey, the mind is a weird thing. The other night I had a dream about canoes. Don’t ask.
Of course Halloween happened, but this year I dressed up as the grim reaper and did a pub quiz. I ended up winning £70 for my friends. Obviously, that was all down to me as I won the final dice-throw. That and our team name was awesome – “To Neigh Or Not To Neigh, That Is Equestrian”.
2011 was a great year for viral video. In November alone we saw two ends of the British social spectrum. Fenton was released into the wilds of Richmond Park and into our hearts as his owner editorian consultant Max Findlay comes screaming after him.
Shortly after, things got a bit more racist as My Tram Experience went viral, catching the love of the working class Londoner in full flow. Thankfully, she was found and arrested later on. Good old public justice, eh love. I hope the arresting officer was black. Oh man I would love that so much.
The residents of Winton decided they were sick of us students livening up their streets around the university. The backlash of this is still on-going, but really now they’re like “Oh, that? Pfft. We over-reacted. Honestly. We love you guys!” just because they realised that it’s the students that have the power to turn the music up louder…

Finally, and perhaps most notably, I did Movember. Looking dashing with a moustache, of course. I raised about £115 for charity for growing a bit of extra facial hair, which is great of course. Although I didn’t really do the moustache thing until right at the very end, where any guy in his right mind would shave a ‘tache if he could. Would I do it again? Probably not. But those are always famous last words…
And there we have it. 2011 wrapped up with a nice pretty bow on it. How adorable.
This is probably the last proper blog post you’ll be seeing over at raconteurblog.net, as it’s popping to wordpress.com in 2012, but don’t be too sad. There’ll be a post explaining it all coming in the near future. Don’t drink too much this evening, will you now!