It must have been about four months ago when Jack mentioned that one of his friends on Facebook mentioned that as far as he was concerned ‘2016 could just f**k right off’. I don’t know which of the many horrible pieces of bad news that we’ve all had to put up with this year pushed him to make that comment, but I didn’t half agree with him. It started with the shocking death of David Bowie and so many other ‘national treasures’ followed him right to the end of this year.

It just kept getting worse and worse though in all sorts of ways and it has without doubt been the saddest and most heart-breaking year that I can ever remember, and I’ve had a few of them over the years.

How do you feel about numbers? I was born at home – a number 33 and I’ve always liked 3, it’s a lucky number. I’ve never liked the number 6, despite the fact that I was born in June, I’ve always been quite trepidatious of number 6. It’s probably something to do with that biblical ‘666’ thing, although I’m reliably informed that that is a mistranslation and it should really be 606 – whatever! So I will be glad to get rid of that 6 from the year date.

I really can’t see that 2017 is going to be any better, in fact I suspect it’ll be even worse what with Brexit and T***p, but I live in hope, because I grew up from the age of 5 in a house that was a number 17 and for me it has always been a friendly number. I know, I’m clutching at straws – but it’s definitely straw clutching time.