Dom Joly: Shoemaker on pole in F1 pantomime

What a year 2009 has been in sport. In certain areas, it has been pretty much the same as any other year – a trip to America revealed that the endless basketball game that seems to be played continually on US TV is still going strong. As I flew back from Houston the score was 9,287,001 to 9,279,657 but it was still unclear which team would prevail. Nobody is exactly sure, but there is a strong theory that the game started in the "Hood" in about 1972 but TV did not actually pick it up until 1981. By then the scores were 2,956,672 to 3,100,234 so things have clearly swung the other way since it has been televised.

Similarly, back in the UK, very important, nay, crucial games of football seem to have been taking place almost nightly with pot-bellied men of a certain age worrying about the result in a way that made you doubt the clear fact that there would be another, equally important game on its way the following evening. The world of British football was nearly shaken to the core when Cristiano Ronaldo had a brief fling with Paris Hilton and she expressed an interest in buying the entire Premier League. Fortunately, she has the attention span of a guppy fish and went shoe shopping instead.

Tiger Woods' PR team, having managed to stem a building bad press, finally had a nervous breakdown and rang Tiger to tell him that they were all resigning to go and spend some more time with their families before Tiger did. The next day, the wall of silence was breached and the Tiger scandal hit the press.

It started with the birdies but soon papers had stories of Woods burning the wings of butterflies with a magnifying glass and hosting "kitten drowning" parties. As we approach 2010, things look very bad for Woods with rumours that a huge exposé is about to be printed linking him with Mark Thatcher and Simon Mann in the attempted overthrow of the government of Equatorial Guinea. Stories racing around bars in Durban say that Woods was to be actively involved in the coup and used the nom de guerre "Bad Mutha".

In Formula One there was far less heard of the popular Nazi orgy scene and a bit more about the racing. Lewis Hamilton, having married all of the Pussycat Dolls, moved with them to a fortified enclosure in Dubai to protect them from Tiger Woods. This obviously affected his racing and allowed showgirl Jennifer Button to take the title. This, in turn, angered an evil German Shoemaker, who vowed to return and kill Button. This storyline weirdly echoed the plot for this year's Puss in Boots at the Wimbledon Theatre starring Ross Kemp as the Shoemaker.

In cricket, England won the Ashes and everyone was urged to ring randomly a number in Sydney or Melbourne and laugh heartily down the phone. I was unfortunate in that I chose to ring Leo Sayer (who was deported to the island prison five years ago) and he took the opportunity to sing me his greatest hits.

In athletics, the phenomenon that is Usain Bolt went from strength to strength. Well know gambling billionaire Edward (the successful one from Jedward) paid for Bolt to be flown out to his Russian headquarters. There, Bolt raced a steam train, an ostrich on hallucinogens and the short thing in Top Gear driving a Range Rover Vogue. Bolt beat both the train and the short thing, but was attacked and savagely beaten by the ostrich.

Tennis fans' hopes for a British triumph at Wimbledon were once again blighted by Scot Andy Murray's debilitating Twitter habit. In the middle of a crucial point in the semi-final, Murray was distracted by a tweet from his coach informing him that he had lost a forfeit and was going to have to dress up as Charlie Chaplin for dinner. This seemed to put Murray off and he lost, leaving the way open for Swiss showman Tony Federer to win the tournament in front of Cilla Black and Cliff Richard.

It's been an incredible year but, of course, it will be an even more incredible one next year. I predict that Usain Bolt will break the sound barrier, the Shoemaker will be banned for using an oil slick and Freddy Flintoff will become the new face of Agent Provocateur after modelling a lacy thong in the shower on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!...

Dog days of winter

The Cotswolds have turned into one giant ice rink. Using a harness I have turned my two dogs into huskies. I'm off sale shopping, "mush, mush..."