10 Predictions for 2011 ...

President Berlusconi will surprise everyone by not being involved in a sex scandal for the first four months of the year – until he is discovered under a table with Carla Bruni at an official dinner. President Obama will attempt to boost his popularity by invading Lichtenstein (it’s small, so the war will be fast and cheap).

George Clooney, Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon will not make any films in 2011 as they are too busy protesting the invasion of Lichtenstein. Michael Moore will make a documentary on the invasion. The word ‘celebrity’ will be redefined in the dictionary as ‘1. once appeared on a reality show, 2. once dated someone who appeared on a reality show’.

War. Famine. Natural disaster. You get the picture. The only new event will be … no, it’ll be war, famine and disaster again.

Mark Zuckerberg will unveil plans for Facebook chips to be implanted in users’ heads so that they can pass their thoughts directly to other users. Everyone will protest at invasion of privacy but sign up anyway. Zuckerberg’s plans will misfire when Paris Hilton signs up and the sheer vacuity of her thoughts causes an irreversible overload of the system.

Damien Hirst sells the mummified body of his childhood pet hamster ‘Formaldehyde’ for a record $127 million dollars. The presentation of the Turner Prize is interrupted by the ghost of Turner himself, shouting ‘Call yourself artists? In my day we knew how to do a proper painting!

Reality TV shows will make up 78.43% of programming. South Park will run out of celebrities to lampoon. The number of obscure US cable channels will break the 3 million mark.

JK Rowling will reveal that she was just kidding about ending Harry Potter, and that she has already written another 17 sequels this year. A book by an obscure Azerbaijani writer will scoop all the major literary prizes, and everyone will pretend to have read it so as to seem intelligent.

There will be very little in the way of original movies this year, theatres instead being full of sequels, remakes and adaptations of video games (this is easy to predict as it happens every year). However, there will be upset at the Oscars when presenter Mickey Rourke gets drunk and punches Sigourney Weaver, shouting ‘I should have got Aliens!’

Celebrities will praise the new ‘Air Diet’, which consists of nothing more than purified air; Madonna immediately endorses a special Kabbalah version. Coca-Cola will bring out their own version, which they have to withdraw from the market when it turns out to have been bottled in downtown LA.

As homelessness increases in 2011, designers will take inspiration from those forced to live on the streets. As the launch of ‘hobo chic’ will take the world of fashion by storm, enterprising street dwellers will sell their clothes to rich people as ‘designer originals’.

What are your predictions for 2011? Does every year feel like Groundhog Day?

Top Photo Credit: Moeys Photography