In 2017, Simon, myself and a gleeful bevy of guests played 981 pieces of music on Eclectic Kettle. As always, the annual traditional distilling to just five tracks makes for a slightly absurd proposition. But with the consternation and relentless trial of a year tainted by violence, sex crimes and the smear of tanning spray, there must be some satisfaction in noting its end. There was great music, so at least we’ll take that with us to the next one.

At Christmas last year, I left my job at Twitter after seven years. A month in, I got the first instinct to write about one sliver of the real-time society in contrast to my newfound sense of space. (It took a little while to edit it for publication.)

Here we go again. In 2018 the Eclectic Kettle playlist spanned 1073 tracks. As we went through the emotional rollercoaster of compiling the final episode, pulling some of our favourite tracks we’d ever played, I feel really good about how our show ended up sounding. Now, with that final Christmas Day broadcast edited and cued up, just time for one more “Parboiled…” post for me to reflect on our final year.