New Year is always a time to reflect on what's happened over the previous twelve months - the good and the bad. Friends you've made, loved ones you have lost.

Lots of good things happened to me in 2018, but I am not going to pretend it was one of the best years of my life. It's been a year of almost constant work, with very little time left over for anything else. I may be a workaholic, and I know I'm perceived in that way, but you know what they say about all work and no play. That is something I'd like to change next year. Learning to say 'no' is something I haven't yet quite perfected. I need to do it more. 

  1. Losing my LBC Drivetime show to Eddie Mair and moving back to the evening show. 
  2. CNNTalk moving to three shows a week.
  3. Launching the Iain Dale Book Club and Cross Question podcasts, and For the Many going from strength to strength.
  4. Publishing HONOURABLE LADIES with Jacqui Smith in September,
  5. Going to visit our friends Deborah and Mike in Spain and being ill the whole time.
  6. Being diagnosed with a hiatus hernia and losing more than a stone in weight in the process, meaning I weigh less than at any time in the last thirty years.
  7. Leaving Biteback Publishing after ten years.
  8. Being offered a weekly column by the Eastern Daily Press, five years after being fired from my last one.
  9. Writing my first long-read profile (of Gavin Williamson) for the Sunday Times magazine.
  10. Investing money in a new business start-up, DJB Machinery, a forestry machinery company. So far it's doing very well!
  11. August 29th marked the fact that Simmo and I have been together for 23 years and June 15th was our tenth wedding anniversary.
  12. Appearing on Question Time for the first time in April, and much to my surprise, enjoying it.
  13. Starting a series of regular appearances on The Wright Stuff, which morphed into Jeremy Vine.
  14. Going to the Edinburgh Festival.
  15. Hosting an In Conversation evening with the Israeli & Palestinian Ambassadors at The Thirty Club.
  16. Saying goodbye to my dear friends Bert Rose and Audrey Barker.
  17. Becoming a regular on Good Morning Britain with Jacqui Smith.
  18. Wondering if I had skin cancer after being told two moles on my body could be pre-cancerous. They weren't.
  19. Becoming obsessed with The Greatest Showman, and seeing Chess and Bat out of Hell at the theatre. 
  20. Visiting Baku, Azerbaijan for the first time.