Columnist John Nurden gives his predictions for 2023...

When I was a lad, my dad would religiously buy a copy of Old Moore’s Almanack to see what the future held.

It wasn’t on a par with the 500-year-old Book of Predictions by Nostradamus but it always correctly foretold rising fuel prices and international conflicts threatening to turn into World War Three.

For the new year, I dusted down my crystal balls and came up with my own list of inscrutable insights. Old Nurden’s Almanack predicts the following:

• Media: Jeremy Clarkson, currently in the doghouse after dissing Meghan Markle, will lose his column but be offered the job of patrolling Twitter by Elon Musk.

• Health: Steve Barclay will solve all NHS problems at a stroke by sacking staff and then rehiring them as freelance agency workers, effectively tripling the budget while at the same time allowing everyone to work the hours they want.

• Sport: The Lionesses will be allowed to join Gareth Southgate’s squad, letting England win all future football matches.

• Shopping: Amazon will buy up all high street hairdressers, barbers and nail bars and deliver them to your door so you can be pampered in a Ford Transit parked on your drive.

• Tech: Apple will abandon iPhones but replace them with iBrains to be embedded in your head so telephone calls will be diverted directly to your ears.

• Water: Egg white will be added to supplies in the same way as fluoride. This will fix all leaking pipes from the inside in the same way it repaired the radiator of my much-missed Austin Healey Sprite in the summer of 1976.

• Politics: The Monster Raving Loonies and Greens will merge to encourage us to plant money trees in our gardens. This will not only help neutralise carbon dioxide pollution but also balance our budgets. An added side-effect will lead to the abolition of banks...

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