Wokeness has peaked, but it’s far from over

Hero
The thirsty chap at the PDC World Darts Championship who brought the entire arena to a standstill – including the competitors – as he downed a four-pint jug of beer. The unnamed arrows fan, who was dressed in a hotdog costume, was booted out of Alexandra Palace for his efforts. “I was just intrigued to see if he could finish it,” said darts player Nathan Aspinall, who stopped mid-game to watch him. “Unbelievable.”

Villains
The thieves who exacerbated the nationwide shortage of Guinness before Christmas by stealing a truck carrying 400 50-litre kegs of the black stuff from a depot in the Midlands. It’s possible the booze burglars were planning a giant festive knees-up with whoever stole the 22 tonnes of Neal’s Yard cheese in October, the 400 legs of acorn-fed ham in Spain in November, and the 2,500 high-end pies destined for York Christmas Market in December.

Villains
Pharmacists, who have been told to stop using “harmful” language such as “blackmail” and “black market”. Nav Bhogal, a regional head of the profession’s largest union, says much of the language used in the healthcare sector has “racial undertones”: “blackout”, for example, equates the word black with “undesirable circumstances”, while the use of “blacklist” for drugs that cannot be prescribed on the NHS “perpetuates the idea that ‘black’ is bad”.

Hero
Robert Hudson, Britain’s longest-serving postman, who has retired after 60 years. The 76-year-old, known as Rocky, carried out his final night shift at the Docklands Delivery Office in east London on 28 December, six decades after starting out as a messenger delivering telegrams in the Whitechapel Delivery Office. He said the first thing he’d do in retirement was “turn all my alarms off”.

Villain
Richard Lacey, a retired breathalyser designer, who has been banned from driving after failing a roadside breathalyser test. “I’ve really got nothing to say,” the 70-year-old, who had drunk a bottle of wine and several pints, told Llandrindod Wells magistrates’ court. “I misjudged how much I’d drunk.”

The Traitors is back for a third series “in all its camp glory”, says Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. The BBC’s hit game show – in which 22 strangers have to work out who among them has been secretly designated a “traitor” – somehow manages to be both “profoundly unserious and completely riveting”. Last year’s finale set a high bar, but series three opens with confidence, “as if the producers are sure that this crop of contestants will deliver the high drama”. Contestants this year include a retired opera singer, a secret priest and an ex-soldier posing as a nail technician – and the whole thing starts with a marvellous twist. Three episodes available, 1hr each.

The annoying “icks” that turn me off men

Despite enduring a year of “self-enforced dating torture”, I did not get a boyfriend in 2024, says Charlie Gowans-Eglinton in The Times. What I certainly did get was “the ick”: the modern dating phenomenon describing an abrupt shift from attraction to repulsion, “when some seemingly trivial action proves to be an irrevocable turn-off”. My personal icks included one man who, sitting on a table outside a pub, “placed one of the provided blankets over his knees, still folded, and tucked himself in at the edges”. Another, walking along the street, “took aim and kicked a piece of litter”. Others were even more trivial: doing up all his jacket buttons; only reading non-fiction books; filling the air with clouds of strawberry watermelon vape.

My friends are just the same. Their recent icks include “performative career busyness” – one sent me a picture of a papoose-like contraption that allows you to wear your laptop while you’re using it – signed sports memorabilia in adult bedrooms, “anyone who calls themselves an empath”, and people who don’t have a TV and think this makes them “intellectually superior”. But just when I’ve nearly given up hope, suddenly a date inspires the opposite: “the anti-ick”. These include stopping to look in a bookshop window; telling his friends he loves them; smiling at dogs. And my latest, the man who – unprompted – brought two different types of crisps back from the bar on his round, and then spatchcocked the packets into foil plates and presented them to me. “Now that’s hot.”