Hello and welcome to the Sleb Safari Celebrity Awards of 2022. As always, it was a close-run race and a game of two halves. There were winners, there were losers, but what mattered was the taking part - unless you were Liz Truss.
Vegetable of the year
The winner was ahead by a mile, mainly kos it was as intransigent as an iceberg.
Despite its celebrity, little is known about the politics of the lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss as UK prime minister. We aren’t even sure if it voted romaine or leaf.
After the fuss died down, the little gem retreated from the limelight to spend some much needed down-time in its happy place - the garden. Lettuce never forget its service.
I never got over you Award
The runner up is Piers Morgan whose infatuation with Meghan Markle continues to alarm but the winners are Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
20 years after they called off their wedding the couple reunited and Ben risked life and limb by getting down on bended knee on wet bathroom tiles to propose to his beloved as she bathed.
The lovebirds eloped to Las Vegas where they got married after midnight and as Jennifer wrote in her On The J.Lo newsletter for fans: "We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient.” Expect to see that added to Corinthians in the next print run of the Bible.
Showbiz injury of the year
Sleb Safari’s Library of Showbiz Injuries is more of a lean-to than the Library of Congress-esque magnificence it deserves but, nonetheless, is an invaluable resource for celebrity scholars. Entries came thick and fast in 2022 but Sleb Safari’s ‘favourite’ involved Olly Murs stopping a private concert at an 18th birthday party when an audience member threw a peanut at him. Yes, yes, Dave Grohl did go back on stage with his leg in a cast one hour after breaking it in a fall but a peanut to the forehead is a thousand times worse.
Most hostile stance against China Award
Daniel O’Donnell joining TikTok…
The film no-one was waiting for Award
Avatar gave the winner a good run for their money but the award must go to Blackbird - the critically reviewed spy film Michael Flatley wrote, starred in, directed and financed. If you squint at the movie poster you can see in tiny font the strap line ‘This is not a vanity project’.
Peak paranormal Award
2022 was the year celebrities tried to outdo each other with their UFO sightings, haunted homes, clairvoyance and general alien encounters. Vanessa Hudgens chatted to a ghost who might have been a lorry driver on a walkie-talkie; Camilla Cabello told Jimmy Fallon she had captured footage of unidentified flying objects and then immediately felt guilty for having betrayed alien trust and Craig David announced he was psychic, clairvoyant and clairaudient. But it is the one and only GC who sashays away with this award for her ‘My mum and the alien on the train’ story.
Gemma’s mum thought there was something off about a fellow passenger. In a nutshell, "the eyes were dead”.
“So she said, in her head, 'Rustle your newspaper up and down, go up and down with your newspaper three times if you're an alien'.”
And?
“He done it. My mum reckons this guy was reading her mind. The alien literally formed as a human.”
That must be it, because the alternative is far too sensible. A deserving winner and Sleb Safari hopes Gemma shares the prize with her mum, because everyone deserves half a selection box.
Happy new year and here’s to 2023!
Montry Don: Influencer
One man who can stride forth into 2023 with his head held high, knowing he’s changing lives left, right and centre is Monty Don.
Take Gemma Collins for instance. She’s come over all green thumbed since moving to the countryside and her only wish for Christmas was to be gifted a Monty Don greenhouse.
“My dream would be for someone to buy me a Monty Don style greenhouse for my garden, because I love gardening,” she told The Sun.
“Since moving to the countryside, I have really calmed down. Normally I would be like I want diamonds this, diamonds that, it means jack s**t to me, I would love a greenhouse so I could continue to grow produce throughout the year.”
Sleb Safari hopes to see the GC in wellies and corduroy digging spuds before the year is out.
John Travolta to the biscuit aisle please, John Travolta to the biscuit aisle
SLEB Safari’s favourite celebrity sighting of 2022 was of John Travolta “mooching around the digestive biscuits” in a Norfolk supermarket.
John was thought to have been filming nearby and presumably fancied a biscuit to dunk in his cuppa.
A lady called Sam Frary grabbed her chance to say hello.
“He was so approachable and friendly so, when he came and stood next to me at the end of the checkout, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to talk to him,” she told the PA news agency at the time.
“Never in a million years did I think that I’d be sharing the biscuit aisle with an A-list Hollywood star.”
Well quite, Sam.