Platell's people 2009: My Monster of the Year is as fake as his new tan

Throughout the year, this column has delivered a waspish take on the personalities behind the week's news. Here, Amanda Platell looks back at those heroes and villains - and chooses Platell's People's Awards for 2009.



In a world overpopulated by lying, conniving hypocrites, one man stood out this year as the worst: our former Prime Minister Tony Blair.



Typical of his breathtaking arrogance was the revelation at the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that he was told that Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction (Blair's main reason for ordering an invasion), yet he still decided to go to war ten days later.



We also discovered that Blair held most of the key meetings, leading up to the invasion, behind closed doors with President Bush.

Tony Blair is Amanda Platell's Monster of the Year

Even his Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, now accuses Blair of 'sycophancy', saying: 'He couldn't resist the stage or the glamour it gave him.' In the end, Blair was not so much Bush's poodle as his very own Paris Hilton lapdog.



At least we now know why Blair was so desperate to be loved in the U.S. and why he betrayed his own people, sending thousands of our troops to war (and hundreds to their deaths).



No, it wasn't pure ego. Nor was it his strong Christian faith. (While nowadays he regularly uses his spiritual beliefs as a shield to hide behind, he steadfastly refused to 'do God' while in Downing Street.)



The reason is simple: Blair has earned an estimated £14 million since he left office, most of it linked to his close bonds with the U.S. And there we were, thinking that Cherie was the greedy grasper in the family.



Of course, she, too, surpassed her previous heights of self-delusion and self-promotion this year.



Despite spending £250,000 on antiques for just one of her many homes in her £17million property portfolio, she said: 'It's nice to be comfortable, but I'll never stop worrying that I've got enough.'



Comfortable! Her husband earns nearly ten times the average salary for delivering a 13-minute speech. The Blairs are not so much champagne socialists now as chateaux socialists.



As always, Blair is defiantly unmoved by his snowballing unpopularity among Britons. Many of us may detest him, but he says he's widely loved in the rest of the world.



Hang on a second! Since he's not got many friends in the Middle East (where his peace envoy work has solved little), in Europe (where he's hated for dragging the EU into two wars), Pakistan, Indonesia or any other Muslim country, he must mean he's Public Hero No. 1 in Lithuania.



The truth is that Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is as fake as his new tan.



WOMAN OF THE YEAR



I salute Christina Schmid, widow of bomb disposal expert Oz who was killed in Helmand trying to make safe another Taliban roadside bomb.



At a time when sentimentality threatens to become a nation's abiding response to the war in Afghanistan, Mrs Schmid demonstrated the true dignity of mourning.



Rather than indulge in the mawkish modern custom of wailing and flinging flowers for the benefit of TV cameras, her stoicism was an awe-inspiring example of the proper way to honour fallen heroes.

MAN OF THE YEAR



Iain Duncan Smith, the man who coined the phrase 'Broken Britain', is the only politician with the guts to tell the truth about the problems this country is facing.



Namely, that we will never solve the human tragedies created by welfare dependency, drug abuse and worklessless until we rebuild the institution of the family.



The former Tory leader's Centre For Social Justice think-tank has thought the unthinkable about how to tackle this fundamental social problem - now it's up to David Cameron to try to do the undoable.



Meanwhile, Duncan Smith's beloved wife, Betsy, has been battling cancer. Clearly, courage runs in the family.

CLOT OF THE YEAR



Taken the hint: Alesha Dixon

Mercifully, Alesha Dixon (pictured), the woefully inadequate replacement for Arlene Phillips on Strictly Come Dancing, has taken the hint and says she will concentrate on her singing career rather than her role as drudge, sorry judge, on the BBC1 show.



Nicknamed 'Ditto' Dixon because of the hopeless way she drearily parroted her fellow judges' comments, she was originally heralded as 'the new Cheryl Cole' - gorgeous, pouting, compassionate.



True, she does share one thing with the Perfect Plastic Princess of Pop, who mimed her first solo single on The X Factor - a similar singing voice.



WITCH OF THE YEAR



A toss-up between Katie Price and Harriet Harman - super-inflated breasts vs super-inflated ego, but both dangerous caricatures of womanhood.



This pair seem hell-bent on humiliating and traducing men. Price shows her contempt for them by drip-feeding the red-top tabloids with an endless stream of tawdry stories about her lovers (including vitriolic smears against the fathers of her children as well as about her latest boyfriend, a cross-dressing cage boxer).



Harman is no less subtle. Her hatred of men is betrayed by her pernicious equal rights law and the ludicrous sex discrimination culture it has spawned.



Labour's deputy leader parades this agenda as a landmark victory for working women when the opposite, in fact, is true.



History will judge her zealotry to have done more to hinder the progress of women in the 21st century than any Page Three bimbo.

ICEBERG OF THE YEAR



Nicole Kidman is the only iceberg that hasn't melted this year. Just dropping her in the Antarctic would have more benefit than three Copenhagen environmental summits, because she would instantly reduce the temperature by at least two degrees.



AND A THANK-YOU TO...

The minicab driver who struggled valiantly to get me home during the bad snows this week. In 5in heels, there was no other way I could lug the Christmas turkey back to the house.



And to the group of young lads wearing hoodies, whom I would like to have hugged after they helped by grabbing handfuls of salt to throw on the road and help us get a grip.



And, finally, to the extremely gallant man with eyes as green as a holly bush who also came to our rescue.



