Get ready for the year of the neophiliac

Daring to face up to the unusual may well be a resolution to consider at midnight tonight

They say that Mr Bean has checked into the Cottonwood de Tucson Clinic in Arizona. He, or more specifically his creator Rowan Atkinson, is reported to have gone on a course of psychotherapy with a view to finding himself. Apparently, his achievements had suddenly begun to seem insubstantial, flukes of chance, that will never be repeated. There was a new hostility in the air, all hard-eyed and youthful.

Not for the first time, the rubber-faced funny man has summed up the mood of the moment. We all feel uncertain at this time of the year, but 2003 has been particularly tough: too much rush and bother in the outside world and perhaps a certain inexplicable emptiness within. Now, thank goodness, it is almost over. To help with that all-important sense of closure, it is time to consider some of the trends and developments which will help us through 2004.

There are already whispers in showbiz circles that the future is likely to be pear-shaped. Tired of being told by nagging politicians and doctors that obesity is one of the great and growing evils of the age, the fashionable have begun to eat big and unhealthy as an act of defiance. Faced with a line-up consisting mostly of snake-hipped clones, voters in the television show Pop Idol voted in the millions for Michelle McManus, who weighs more than 15 stone.

So this year, the well-padded look will be back. Love handles will be for 2004 what pert buttocks were for 2003. In politics, someone rather large - very possibly, Charles Clarke - will take advantage of the new association of fatness with reliability and positive self-esteem and, by the end of the year, Vanity Fair will have run a cover story entitled "The New Lardocrats" in which it is revealed that Nicole Kidman is on a diet used by Robert de Niro before appearing in Raging Bull.

During this grim, dying year, it was discovered that something called "toxoplasma gondii" was being transferred from the cats to humans. In 2004, it will become widely recognised that, far from being yet another cause for a health panic, the infection is entirely benign. "Felinicity" will become such a natural and desirable state that even dog-lovers will take to hanging around catteries in the hope of "catching cat".

Catnapping, already popularised by the midday snoozes of George "Snuggles" Bush, will become the norm in many offices, and certain types of social behaviour - jumping on to the lap of the person least expecting it, public preening, sudden bursts of pointless energy - will be indicators of a well-centred personality. All the same, there may be some surprise when Dr "Whiskers" Blunkett announces last-minute revisions to the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill which will allow territory-marking urination by males and deafening acts of coition in dark alleyways at night.

The last two years have seen an alarming erosion of personal privacy with CCTV cameras on every corner, widespread deployment of camera phones, central records of credit card accounts and microchips in virtually everything we buy. In America, not only is the government able to check on what books citizens are reading through library records, but cars with location-tracking devices and a security system which allows a central operator to listen into conversations, lock doors and immobilise engines are widely available. "The car is Big Brother," according to one civil liberties expert.

So privacy zones are likely to become all the rage in 2004. The more paranoiac of us may try to break out of the surveillance net by avoiding spy cars, mobile phones and computers but we shall soon discover that something else - the microwave, perhaps, or the electric blanket - is watching us. At some point, Radio Four will report that a private screening device, similar to radar-jamming equipment in cars, has been invented, allowing an individual to walk through life like a cybernetic black hole, full protected against computer spies.

There may also be a reaction against the proliferation of digital and cable channels on TV with a sort of two-nation gap developing between the obsessively digitised and those who have remained terrestrial. Aware that there are not enough half-decent programmes to go round, the IBA will formalise the decline of Channel Four by renaming in "the Hundred Best channel", allowing it to fill every moment of its schedule with dreary lists featuring old footage and the opinions of unknown comedians.

More positively, something called "neophilia" will take hold in 2004, a result of research over the past few months which has revealed that, while neophobic rats - those who are afraid to explore anything new and unusual - are likely to succumb to disease, brave neophiliac rodents live longer, healthier lives.

So daring to face up to the unusual, to think outside the cage, may well be a resolution to consider at midnight tonight. If we all become slightly more rat-brained, we might just make 2004 a happy, adventurous New Year.

terblacker@aol.com