Never in a Million Years, By Ivor Baddiel & Johnny Zucker

From the sage who pontificated in 1900 that by 2000 "there will be no C, X or Q in our alphabet" to the oculist who opined in 1934 that "Man's eyes will come closer together… and finally become one large Cyclopean eye in the centre of the face", this compendium of wonky predictions is a delightful detonation of wiseacres.

Not all these fallacious prognostications were made back in the mists of time. As recently as 2005, Sir Alan Sugar asserted, "Next Christmas, the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput." Inexplicably, we still prefer Apples to Amstrads.