Mr Blackwell - HecklerSpray

There’s only one reason why we even slightly enjoy coming back to work after our Christmas break, and that’s Mr Blackwell.

For the last 35 years, the highlight of January has been Mr Blackwell’s worst-dressed list – a bewilderingly written, mostly-alliterative rhyme-heavy blizzard of celebrity nastiness that couldn’t have sounded any more camp if it was read aloud by a talking buttplug in a feather boa at a Cher concert.

But Mr Blackwell won’t be writing a worst-dressed list for 2009, because Mr Blackwell has died of complications from an intestinal infection. It’s a sad day for sure but, who knows, maybe one day scientists will find some of Mr Blackwell’s blood inside a mosquito that’s been trapped in amber and splice his DNA with frogs to create a theme park where all the exhibits run around telling you that your blouse looks crap.

Forget Christmas, Easter or that one day we're allowed to be unchained from our desks for 30 minutes, Mr Blackwell's worst-dressed list is always our favourite time of year.

Once a year at the start of January, thousand-year-old Mr Blackwell is temporarily defrosted from his diamante-studded cryogenic chamber, flicks through a few celebrity magazines and then lists the ten worst-dressed people of the year, spending extra-special time to make sure each celebrity description sounds like some sort of froth-mouthed witch's incantation.

And this year we'd like to advise Victoria Beckham not to read Mr Blackwell's list. That's assuming she can read, of course, which we'll admit is a stretch.