2007: Looking back

So, it’s nearly the end of 2007 and therefore it’s time to start to have a look back over the last year and recall what made the headlines this year.

Way back in January 2007, was of course the return of Celebrity Big Brother. Even people, such as myself, who don’t watch the programme cannot have failed to see the headlines about this programme. We got to spend time in the company of people such as Leo Sayer, Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty. Taking part in CBB is meant to help to relaunch flailing careers but we are still (thankfully) waiting for the resurgence of Leo Sayer and Jade Goody went from the ‘celebrity’ people loved for being a bit dim to the ‘has-been’ that can’t work out the difference between making polite conversation and calling someone a poppadum. It certainly raised people’s profiles, but I imagine if you were looking for some cheap perfume for someone you didn’t actually like then you could probably have picked up some of Jade’s (then) newly launched perfume cheap on a market stall.

In other news from January, a boy in America who had been missing for four years was found, interest rates rose again, the first ‘super-casino’ was announced and Labour party officials were arrested in the cash for honours scandal.

There was also the somewhat gruesome hanging of Saddam Hussein’s half brother, which actually decapitated him. Closer to home, a National Express coach crashed killing two people and having started many years ago, Magnus Magnusson finally finished when he died aged 77.

February was not a great month for Bernard Matthews, when his turkey farm was found to have Bird Flu, which resulted in thousands of birds being culled. It was also the month that Britney Spears realised too late that the Wallace and Gromit film “A Close Shave” had already been made and she needn’t have shaved off all her hair after all. There was also the tale of the female astronaut who drove across America in a nappy to confront her love rival. I think it is fair to say that she has now come back down to earth on that one with a bit of a bump when she was charged with attempted first degree murder.

In other news from February, a Virgin train crashed in Cumbria killing one woman; Anna Nicole Smith died somewhat unexpectedly at the age of 39; Sheridan Morley died aged 65; and, Ian Richardson’s House of Cards tumbled down when he died aged 72.

There’ll be more to come (and I’ll add some links) over the next few days...