The year opened with the momentous news that The Slog has passed 13 million views since being launched in 2009.

This evening’s filmic offering on ITV2 was the James Bond epic Live and let Die Another Day only Not Twice Forever. I tried to follow it for the first five minutes, and then I gave up. My guests spent the next two hours asking whether the black love interest was CIA, whether the Chinese agent had undergone plastic surgery, and whether M was really angry with Bond, or just spurring him on to new heights.

‘The country is on course for a brighter future…Over the past five years we have gone a long way to restoring our fortunes, but letting Labour into power risks throwing it all away.’ This is what the man I still find it difficult to think of as our Prime Minister, David Cameron, wrote in the Maily Telegraph today. On reading it, I was struck by how the plot of Live and let Die Another Day only Not Twice Forever was far more believable. It involved swimming for hours through ice-cold waters that would kill anyone within two minutes, disappearing cars, and harnessing the sun purely for the purposes of killing one of Bond’s assistants. But compared to the idea of Greece staging a recovery and Italy staying in the eurozone, it was clinically true-to-life. And when put alongside the idea that the UK’s economy is anything other than a manufactured bit of paper drivel and housing bribes, Live and let Die Another Day only Not Twice Forever was a painstaking documentary.

Earlier in the day came The Wizard of Oz – and this too was an inspired choice of reality television. Ed Miliband was well cast as the lion with no courage, and Jeremy Hunt played the tin man with no heart to perfection. But outstanding for me was Antonis Samaras as the scarecrow with no brain. Christine Lagarde as the wicked witch of the west was certainly believable, and the decision to hand the role of Dorothy to Tony Blair was, if nothing else, courageous.

We kicked off with eight degrees of frost this morning,the temperature soared to minus 4 by mid afternoon, and tonight it’s ten below. So far this winter, this has to be game and first set to Vladimir Putin.