Barely a year goes by these days without some kind of major news event occurring. Time was, not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, when nothing much would happen for a couple of centuries. Some historians (OK, Wikipedia) note that in the year 1317, there were only four events. It must have been a testing time to be a newsreader or topical panel show comedian; but was the planet happier, unencumbered by things that were happening, and people’s reactions to things that were happening, preoccupied as they were by humble pursuits such as avoiding death? Who knows.

Now, however, news never sleeps (which might explain why it has become so short-tempered and erratic). As the first year in history in which the most powerful person in the world has been an internet troll with access to a Twitter account, 2017 has been even more newsically unrelenting than its predecessor, role model and inspiration, 2016.

Here in the UK, frantic Brexit scrabblings have power-pedalled the news cycles off the road into several ditches. The ongoing debate over the optimum level of Brexity hardness or softness, from ragingly tumescent to apologetically flaccid, has divided the nation all year, complicated by the fact that Britain’s wise political bigwigs had chosen, for whatever reason, to leave working out exactly what Brexit is until after people had already voted for it.

It has been a year of nuclear brinksmanship with a North Korean loon-child, of celebrity sexpestilence being belatedly confronted, of accusations, denials, counter-denials and conspiracy theories, of tension, anger, bafflement and confusion at a planet being tugged simultaneously forwards into an uncontrollable future and backwards towards a largely fictitious past. The medieval and the futuristic have proved uncomfortable bedfellows.

Some of the year’s stories have been difficult, if not impossible, for satire to process

Satire, therefore, has had a busy year. On the global stage provided by the internet, innumerable commentators, from high-level big-budget celebri-satirists, to anonymous citizen satirists with their tweets and memes, have been holding up the Medusa of satire to the already immovably concrete face of politics.

American TV has continued its post-millennial satirical boom, ranging from cartoonish lampoonings to deep journalistic investigation, led by the likes of Saturday Night Live, Samantha Bee and John Oliver, the Emmy-laden former podcaster, who, it is fair to say, has come a long way since he and I were left alone in an empty theatre after our entire audience of four walked out 20 minutes into an Edinburgh preview show in 2004.

Their successes were reflected in a growing number of British TV channels jumping on board the satirical trampoline and stretching beyond the safe confines of the panel show. These are unprecedented times for manufacturers of night-time cityscape backdrops for TV studios. The somewhat aged medium of paper-and-ink has also flourished, with Private Eye enjoying its highest ever circulation.

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Some of the year’s stories have been difficult, if not impossible, for satire to process. As any other year, 2017 has been scarred by its share of domestic and international tragedy. If the underlying issues circulating beneath such matters are to be addressed in a comedic context, it requires utmost delicacy, sensitivity and care, clubs which are not always in the satirical golf bag.

January began with the final 19 days of human history in which Donald Trump Had Never Been President Of The USA. On the 20th, that all changed irrevocably. At what was, despite the snarks of the online naysayers and fact-wielders, the best-attended American Presidential Inauguration for almost four years, Mr Trump was simultaneously sworn in and sworn at.

The reaction to his inauguration was swift, global and striking. Roger Federer, tennis’s resident Michelangelo, was inspired to bring some beauty back into a world scarred from the top by resentment, anger and paranoia, and promptly won the Australian Open, his first major title for almost five years.

Also in January, the remote Marshall Islands in the Pacific suffered a full internet blackout, and instantly rocketed to the top of the World’s Happiest Nations chart.

In April, Theresa May, the acting prime minister, called an unlosable general election. In May, she campaigned with the ferocity of a blancmange, exuding the strength and stability of an underboiled egg on a tightrope. In June, she lost, managing to cling to power only by virtue of losing it less badly than everyone else, and a coalition deal that put the “oh, my” into “compromise”. Jeremy Corbyn, widely touted as unelectable, triumphantly also lost, but by much less than people had expected, the ideal result for any politician.

May’s Brexitically dominated year reached its zenith in October, when a photograph of her sitting alone at a table during talks in Brussels won her a gold award for Best One-Woman Metaphor For Britain’s European Future from the International Foundation For Symbolic Pictures.

April also hosted one of the most significant cultural events of the year – the launch of the multi-award-winning television series The Handmaid’s Tale, an impressively well-researched predictive documentary about Mr Trump’s second term in office.

Trump has been the defining satirical figure, a one-man uncorkable Vesuvius of news, the unignorable rhinoceros

Trump announced in June that America would withdraw from the United Nations’ Paris climate agreement, an international accord of critical importance if we are to have any hope of achieving the keynote global goal of slightly decelerating the end of the world. His decision was met with a mixture of surprise and disgust (0.06% surprise, 99.94% disgust). In essence, it represented America officially resigning from the 21st century.

There were, as ever, shafts of hope penetrating the newsgloom. During her November official jaunt to India, Ivanka Trump, the thinking nepotist’s first lady, had the streets of Hyderabad cosmetically up-spruced for her by the local authorities, who cleared away any unsightly beggars and other visible illustrations of the pernicious side-effects of global inequality. This raised an intriguing philosophical question: if real news reports on fake reality, does it count as fake news? It also heightened expectations that, if Ms Trump can be strategically deployed to all disadvantaged areas of the world, then all poverty will be cured, under the out of sight, out of mind rule (applied this year to easily under-the-carpetable matters such as Yemen, the Rohingya crisis, and the logistical aftermaths of hurricanes).

On the plus side for humanity as a whole, the unpopular terror franchise known as So-Called Islamic State (SCIS) has had another disappointing year. The core SCIS message of persecution, violence, repression, poverty, prejudice, more violence and death has, perhaps understandably, struggled to hit home with a broader public. As a result, the world’s most tedious minority-interest pressure group has found itself hounded out of its erstwhile strongholds, facing a future of increasing marginalisation, or a radical rebranding as an online home furnishings retailer.

2017 has also been a bad year for celebrity sexual misconductors, power-infused perpetrators of long-suppressed crimes, finally brought to light in a world slowly coming to terms with the idea that possession of power, influence and a penis does not convey behavioural carte blanche.

Through all these events, and the myriad other trends, advances and regressions that have shaped the year, Trump has been the defining satirical figure, a one-man uncorkable Vesuvius of news, the unignorable rhinoceros in the Jacuzzi.

Fuelled by an explosive cocktail of an almost biblical fervour and fast-twitch strop fibres in his soul, he has presented both opportunities and challenges for satire. Whatever your opinion of the president and his frantic, mutating world view, the nature of the man and his current job mean that almost everything he says or does – as well as most of the things he does not say and chooses not to do – is ripe for comedic comment. However, if the satirical barb is not fired within approximately 0.1 seconds, someone else, somewhere else, will have already fired it. There were, at the most recent count, an estimated 8.6 billion people satirising Mr Trump on at least a weekly basis.

As 2017 prepares to consign itself to the history books, amid a late flurry of democratic twitchings, the future is all set to begin, once again, on 1 January 2018. You do not need to be a rocket historian to predict that next year’s news will bring both more of the same and unexpected novelties, good and bad.

Satire will be presented with open goals and unplayable bouncers. It will, as ever, provide catharsis, insight and cheap laughs. As well as more expensive laughs. It will hold up its mirror to politics and society, which will, in all likelihood, check their hair in that mirror, before carrying on as normal.

• Andy Zaltzman’s end-of-year show, 2017 – The Certifiable History, is at Soho Theatre, London, until 6 January; his UK tour, Satirist For Hire, starts on 13 January.

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