What were the highlights and lowlights of 2016 for you? Take a look at what we thought were important landmarks in the calendar from month to month.
JANUARY
The year got off to a sad start with the deaths of many well known and prominent celebrities including the much loved entertainer Terry Wogan, the hugely talented actor Alan Rickman, and the ever popular music icon, turned actor, turned art collector David Bowie.
In fact the high profile deaths continued throughout the year, and by the end of the year people were questioning whether 2016 was in fact the worse year ever for ‘celebrity’ deaths.
From film and tv there was Frank Kelly, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett, Anton Yelchin, David Gest, Victoria Wood, Caroline Aherne, Gene Wilder, Jean Alexander, Robert Vaughan, Andrew Sachs, Liz Smith, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Carrie Fisher. From music there was Prince, Glenn Frey, Leonard Cohen, Pete Burns, and recently Rick Parfitt, and George Michael, Literature wise there was Harper Lee, Richard Adams, and from sports we had Johan Cruyff, Dave Mirra, Chyna, Dalian Atkinson, Kimbo Slice, Arnold Palmer, and the Chapecoense football team. Although we know there are a lot more that could be added to this list.
FEBRUARY
Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Academy Award at the sixth time of asking. He also picked up a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe for his portrayal of Hugh Glass in the film The Revenant. The film itself actually received 12 Oscar nominations.
If you’d like a quiz question to ask people the other films he received a nomination for were What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, and The Wolf Of Wall Street (twice).
You can still see a trailer for The Revenant here.
MARCH
To celebrate their 20th anniversary iconic British designer Jimmy Choo created a short but endearing video illustrating some of their finest red carpet moments.
To find out more and to watch the video please visit here.
APRIL
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 90th birthday – although as tradition dictates the celebrations weren’t until June. Already the longest-lived and longest reigning British monarch she also became the world’s oldest reigning monarch and head of state in October.
MAY
In what can only be described as a sporting fairytale Leicester City were crowned Premier League Champions. Relegation favorite’s before a ball was kicked, the bookmakers gave odds of 5000/1 for the Foxes to win the Title – a bet we all wished we had stuck a quid on.
Having just sacked their manager and appointed former Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri the Foxes started the season as relegation favourites, but got their season off to a great start with a free flowing 4-2 victory over Sunderland. They continued with their entertaining style, and the goals kept coming and points total kept rising. Striker Jamie Vardy who was playing for Fleetwood Town only 3 years earlier set a new Premier League record by scoring in 11 consecutive games, and a 3-2 victory at Everton in late December saw Leicester top the league on Christmas Day – exactly 1 year earlier they were rock bottom. Most people still thought it would be impossible they would keep up their momentum, but week in week out they remained top of the league. Chelsea, Tottenham, Man City, and Liverpool were all beaten, and on May 2nd their nearest challengers Spurs failed to beat Chelsea and Leicester were crowned Premier League Champions! They ended up winning the league by a whopping 10 points, only lost 3 times all season, and the bookies learnt a valuable lesson.
JUNE
As Britain chose to ‘Brexit’, gritty British flick I, Daniel Blake set in Newcastle won the coveted Palme D’Or at the illustrious Cannes Film Festival in France and in turn made director Ken Loach a double winner joining an exclusive list. In all the film picked up 13 different accolades from 9 different award shows.
You can read more about it here.
We also lost ‘The Greatest’ as Muhammed Ali passed away at the age of 74 after decades of ill health. The 3-time Heavyweight World Champion was inspiring, controversial, and polarising figure both in and out of the ring.
JULY
Having lost in the final of the Australian and French Open’s Andy Murray made it third time lucky this year when he won Wimbledon en-route to later in the year becoming World Number 1. Having lost to Novak Djokovic at Melbourne Park and Roland Garos he beat Milos Raonic in straight sets to win his second Wimbledon Title. He also won gold at the Summer Olympics as well as 9 other Tour Titles, and the climax of the season the ATP World Tour Finals, again beating Djokovic in the final and thus cementing his place as World Number 1. Not surprisingly he was voted BBC Sports Personality Of The Year for a record third time. All in all not a bad year for the Scot.
Elsewhere in sport despite not winning a group game Portugal beat the host nation France to win Euro 2016. The less said about England’s performance the better.
AUGUST
Scotland took its biggest ever contingent of 48 competitors to the Rio Olympics in Brazil, and a whopping 18 of them came back with medals, across 8 different wide-ranging sports.
Team GB has never had it so good at the Olympics, and so many of the Scottish members of the squad headed home happy to have made sporting history.
Gold medallists, Callum Skinner, Katie Archibald, Heather Stanning and Andy Murray were perhaps the headline-grabbers, but across the Scottish competitors - there were many distinguished performers.
SEPTEMBER
We saw complete opposite ends of the spectrum in the mobile phone market. The iPhone 7 launched and broke pre-order records, meanwhile rival Samsung faced up to a multi-billion pound loss when they had to recall every Note 7 due to overheating issues.
Every launch of a new iPhone is a big deal and greatly anticipated, and this one was no different. Improved hardware, software, and cameras made it a big favourite although there were plenty of people unhappy with the removal of the headphone jack. Although this disapproval paled into insignificance compared to the disaster that was the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. First released in August the smartphone sold over 2.5 million units, however by the end of the month some customers were finding that faulty batteries were causing some phones to generate excessive heat, resulting in fires and explosions. This resulted in a mass recall and eventual discontinuation of the device, at a cost some analysts put of $17 billion. Ouch!
OCTOBER
It was announced that Lady Gaga was set to star in the role of the Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace in the third season of the hit TV series American Crime Story, which examines the murder of her legendary brother Gianni Versace in 1997.
You can read more about it here.
NOVEMBER
Businessman cum TV personality Donald J Trump was voted the 45th President-elect of the United States of America, and everybody in the whole world had an opinion on it.
What started out as what some people thought was simply a publicity stunt ended up with the most unlikely of people being elected to the most powerful country in the world. After a bitterly fought and often ugly election campaign Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton although Clinton actually achieved more overall votes – only in America eh?
That said the deciding night shared similarities to that of the Brexit vote – that night after the polls closed a Remain win was predicted, but the public said Leave – this time a Clinton victory was heavily expected, but midway through the night there was a shift and suddenly ‘The Donald’ took over and never looked back. Did Trump win them over? Probably not – he was hugely controversial and often maligned, but in the end Hillary – who was not without controversy herself – was just less liked. The next 4 years are going to be very interesting.
DECEMBER
Having devoted the year bringing you collections from some of the finest luxury designers on the planet, the hotly anticipated Cruise sale started and it seemed everyone wanted to shop what turned out to be our biggest sale ever with many styles half price!
Be sure to check out The Sale right here.