So 2014’s almost done, and unless you got married, or had your firstborn, or won a Subaru filled with Maltesers in a radio phone-in, it’s unlikely to be a year you’ll remember fondly. It was filled with huge, grim events. So is every year, of course, but in 2014 it seemed there were fewer light moments to offset the enveloping dread. And everyone seemed angry, all the time. A whole planet, gritting its teeth. Hundreds protesting. Thousands marching. Millions waiting to attach their internalised rage to a hashtag at a moment’s notice. We could all use a lie-down over Christmas.

The year started badly for Britain when the sky decided to waterboard the lot of us. It rained incessantly throughout early January; big grey raindrops the size of cupboards. The government issued snorkels to anyone under 5ft 4in, while areas of Devon were submerged for so long the residents evolved gills and blowholes.

No sooner had the waters receded than Channel 4 chose to cheer everyone up by broadcasting Benefits Street – part docusoap, part litmus test for pre-existing prejudice – which managed to further polarise an already polarised debate about welfare largely on account of its button-pushing title and emphasis on petty crime. Since about half of Britain’s benefits bill goes on pensions, a more accurate version of Benefits Street would consist of sedate footage of OAPs enjoying a slice of Battenburg and an episode of Lewis.

Mystery of the year was the vanishing of flight MH370. In the immediate aftermath of its disappearance, various theories were bandied about, starting with terrorism and ending with pilot suicide. The total lack of evidence left TV news with nothing to do but run footage of people in spotter planes staring forlornly at the ocean for signs of wreckage that never appeared. In a world of one-click convenience, where you can discover the name of a man who played a milkman in a long-forgotten Shreddies advert courtesy of a two-second Google, the notion that an entire plane could simply up and leave – potentially for ever – with no regard for narrative resolution seems frighteningly alien. Perhaps that’s why later in the year, when another Malaysian airlines plane went down, this time in a definitive time and place, the media felt compelled to trawl through the wreckage live on air, like dogs marking their scent.

Showbiz had its ups and downs. The movie Gravity, in which Sandra Bullock risked her life by heading up top to fix a sort of aerial thing, just like Rod Hull, had plaudits pissed all over it at the Oscars. And deservedly so: apparently, the entire film was shot in space for tax reasons, so the journey to set every morning must have been hellish.

Speaking of cold voids, following mounting criticism of apparently state-sanctioned homophobia in Russia, the Sochi Winter Olympics passed off largely without incident, although the opening ceremony was slightly marred when, during a climactic lightshow, an Olympic ring failed to fully dilate (fair enough; it’s probably quite hard to source poppers in Russia at the moment).

There were two TV mumbling scandals. First, encouraged by the public’s appetite for foreign-language TV dramas, the BBC decided to go one better and screen a programme you couldn’t understand even though it was in English. Visually, Jamaica Inn appeared to be set on the Quality Street tin during a recession; the problem was the script, because you couldn’t hear it – at least not unless you squinted really hard with your ears, and even then you could only make out the consonants.

Then the Mirror accused Jeremy Clarkson of muttering the “N-word” in some unaired Top Gear rushes. Just to irritate everyone further, he’d mumbled the word – or rather, he’d mumbled at the point in the Eeny Meeny Miney Mo nursery rhyme where the word might be – so it wasn’t unequivocally clear whether he’d actually said it, or just flirted with saying it. He claimed he hadn’t, while a firm of “forensic audio experts” hired by the Mirror claimed he had. So it was his N-word against theirs. In the end, no action was taken, except by the hundreds of thousands of parents who had to explain to their children what the “N-word” was after people kept mentioning it on the telly.

It was a grim year for showbiz. Max Clifford achieved the impossible and made himself 10,000 times less popular than he already wasn’t. For a self-professed master of public image to end up being widely regarded as an underendowed paedophile has to rank as the biggest career fail in history. Then Rolf Harris went to prison for crimes against children, sending a whole swathe of British nostalgia collapsing into oblivion, like a section of cliff face crumbling into the sea.

Westminster also found itself mired in scandal when a decades-old dossier containing the names of various high-profile figures suspected of paedophilia went missing. A search turned up nothing. Well, these things happen. It’s an easy mistake to make, especially in an organisation of that size. Maybe someone just accidentally shredded it with sweating, shaking hands and one foot up against the door.

At around the same time, Theresa May was having difficulty appointing a chairperson for the abuse inquiry. First Baroness Butler-Sloss, then Fiona Woolf … at one point it seemed to have a different guest host each week, like it was Never Mind the Buzzcocks or something. Turns out, when the establishment holds an inquiry into alleged abuses by the establishment, it has a hard time considering anyone who isn’t linked to the establishment already. Perhaps they should look overseas. It has to be someone everyone likes, with absolutely no links to the British establishment. How about Roger Federer?

The sheer number of historic abuse stories meant that just about the only institution not to have been rocked by some kind of paedophile scandal in 2014 was the Great British Bake Off, and even that had constant references to PIE during pastry week.

But things were grimmer still internationally. Isis. Syria. Gaza. Ukraine. Pakistan. There was horror piled upon horror. And even at home, things many had taken for granted, such as the United Kingdom itself, were threatening to split apart. Eventually Scotland voted to remain in the union, but not before scaring the shit out of an increasingly despised Westminster. All politicians are less popular than Stalin-flavoured crisps, with the exception of Nigel Farage, who isn’t in the House of Commons, and Russell Brand, who isn’t a politician.

Farage spent the year outlining an increasingly petty series of complaints. He complained about having to listen to people speaking foreign languages on trains (he must have been relieved when he got home to his German-speaking wife). Then he complained that immigration was causing traffic jams (presumably because he’d scared all the foreigners off the trains). Finally, he complained about public breastfeeding. Yes, public breastfeeding – that grotesque, unnatural spectacle which is a) everywhere you go and b) simply impossible to avoid, unless you take extreme measures, such as looking the other way. Maybe it’s not the breasts he’s annoyed by. Maybe it’s the babies. After all, they make no attempt to assimilate with our culture, can’t speak the language, have no qualifications to speak of, and, worst of all, are stopping him from getting a clear view of a lovely naked tit.

In technology news, Apple launched the iPhone 6, which sports a huge suite of improvements: reduced pocketability, increased ugliness, and enhanced pliability, ie it bends if you sit on it. They also brought out the Apple Watch, which will transform the way people ignore you in conversations for ever. You know how people look at their iPhones when they’re bored of you? Soon they’ll look at their watches instead – just like they did when you were boring back in the good old days, before the iPhone existed.

The Apple watch boasts an impressive full colour display, so you can fully appreciate the latest terrorist atrocity videos and stolen celebrity nudes in the comfort of your own wrist. It also tells the time, just like the iPhone you’re constantly staring at does, and will cost about £300. Not a wind up. It’s chargeable.

Finally, the year was rounded off with a hacking scandal that left Sony reeling. Embarrassing emails were exposed, the script for the next Bond movie was leaked, and, most terrifying of all, the hackers deliberately released the forthcoming reboot of the musical Annie online, for free, where innocent human beings might bump into it. Never mind terrorists with weaponised Ebola – that’s truly ruthless.

• Charlie Brooker’s 2014 Wipe is on BBC2 on 30 December at 10pm