Mother Courage and her Children by Brecht (Old Rep, Birmingham)
Nostalgia by Jimmy Whiteaker (Alma Tavern, Bristol)
The Tempest (RSC, Stratford)
His Dark Materials (The Rep, Birmingham)
Waiting for Godot (Malvern Theatres, Great Malvern)
Honorary mention (for the sheer money thrown at the stage):
The Little Mermaid (Broadway)
Top 5 books (not new at all, can’t be fussy this year):
Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)
A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
What Good are the Arts? (John Carey)
The Player of Games (Iain M Banks)
A Girl in Winter (Philip Larkin)
Honorary mention (for a redeeming ending):
The Angel’s Game (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
Top 5 films:
Milk
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Star Trek
Watchmen
Frost/Nixon
Top 5 films not in Toby's top 5 films:
6.Up
7.Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (also, in case you’re counting, we now have 365421)
8.Waiting For Eric
9.Coraline
10.(500) Days of Summer
Honorary mention: You may think this is a bit unnecessary in this category, but though I’ve only seen about 15 films this year, I’m very fond of a lot of them. So apologies to both Moon and In the Loop.
Top 5 cricket moments (seen):
Strauss batting all day, imperiously, for 161*, the highest England score of the Ashes and the key to our first victory at Lord’s since 1934
Flintoff finishing off the job on Day 4
The other great hero: Trescothick being a hero, but on a smaller, on the Twenty20 finals day at Edgbaston, Somerset v Kent
The end of Monty Panesar? It all goes wrong, Northants v Sussex
The brilliant Caribbean distilled by Dwayne Smith, Somerset v Sussex
Top 5 cricket moments (unseen):
A hotel in Bath, Ponting run out by Flintoff, Steph and Stephen by my side. Doesn’t get any better.
Australia going out of the Twenty20 World Cup in the first round
England annihilating Pakistan, the eventual winners of the tournament, in the same competition
Panesar and Anderson being brilliant at Cardiff, and setting up the Lord’s romp.
Umar Gul taking the best Twenty20 figures ever.
Top 5 cities:
Newcastle
New York
Newcastle
Worcester
Bristol
Top marks if you can work out which Newcastle is which.