2020 has been so awful that the mere mention of it has become a cliche. 

From hundreds of thousands of deaths, to unprecedented limits on social interaction, panic buying, border closures and the cancellation of everything fun, this year has been worse than anyone could realistically have predicted.

So bad, in fact, that even those who prepare for the apocalypse did not think it would be this terrible. 

Yet even allowing for this year’s unpredictability, back in the heady days of January (and the months that followed) some people made predictions that aged jaw-droppingly badly.  

Perhaps, then, we can find some relief from the chaos of 2020 by taking a light-hearted look back at some of its most outrageously wrong predictions. There is only one place to begin.

Boris and his ‘fantastic’ year

The Prime Minister might want to brush up on his crystal ball skills after a host of questionable predictions in 2020, but his new year’s tweet has come back to haunt him repeatedly as calamity after calamity befell the country.

‘This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain,’ he promised, thumbs aloft, months before the country was battered by a deadly virus that forced him into an unprecedented national lockdown.

‘Tremendous twenties’ incoming

Similarly, newspapers made well-meaning but questionable forecasts 12 months ago. 

After a ‘divisive decade’ it was ‘time for the Tremendous Twenties,’ trumpeted The Mirror.

‘Things can only improve after four years of anger, division and political paralysis,’ added The Sun on January 1. 

In a message which could largely be copy and pasted onto its website 365 days later, it went on: ‘We on The Sun cannot recall feeling as hopeful for Britain’s future as we do on this first day of a new decade.’

Weeks later there was no loo roll on the shelves.

We can only hope the next nine years belatedly prove them right.

Crystal ball rating: 5/10, there is always next year.

Poor woman who had the worst year 

No one has had a great year, but spare a thought for comedian Robyn Shall, who talked us through her ‘2020 goal list’ last month in self-deprecating hysterics. 

Robyn explained that at the end of 2019, she had hoped 2020 would see her make more money, travel more, lose weight, be more social, cry less and spend more time with her Grandma. 

One woman, who throws asparagus tips in the air and ‘reads’ how they land, confidently predicted Trump would win. 

‘Mystic Veg’ Jemima Packington, an ‘asparamancer’, said the incumbent would beat Biden before being impeached. 

He was in fact impeached first, before promptly losing. 

Sticking with the US President, he said in July that coronavirus will ‘just disappear’. That came after he predicted in March that the peak death rate is likely to hit ‘in two weeks’. 

That prediction was, predictably, utterly wrong and the US went on to quickly rack up the highest death tally in the world.

The misplaced prophecies continued across the pond, with the PM’s hopes for Christmas ‘normality’ well into November, after first making the claim in July. 

Mr Johnson even said it would be ‘inhuman’ to cancel Christmas – in a stunning failure to predict his own cancellation of festive celebrations just days later. 

Crystal ball rating: 1/10, coronavirus did not just disappear, obviously.

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