Donald MacLeod: The Donald trumped us all in a year which leaves a bitter taste

’TIS the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la! I think you’d better grab a brolly, fa la la la la, la la la la!

All joking apart, I’ll leave the storms to bring the hatches down on your Christmas and dampen any festive spirits you may have left .

I ask that you all jump aboard my shoogly sleigh for a look back, hopefully with not too much anger, at the year’s highlights and lowlights.

Think back to January and, if you were looking to the stars for any encouragement, you weren’t in luck as, sadly, we said farewell to the Starman, David Bowie.

Life was definitely not Hunky Dory when I heard that Ziggy Stardust had suddenly and quietly passed away.

February was, of course, the month the UK Government began the final countdown to the European referendum on June 23. Should we stay or should we go? Well, who’d a-thunk we’d decide to pack our bags? Erm, I did!

Soon-to-be-outgoing Chancellor George Osborne delivered his not-so-magical budget medicine in March – a bitter pill that many, especially the disabled, found hard to swallow.

A toxic tonic for all those living on benefits and one that took the fizz and sugar out of our soft drinks industry.

April was filled with news of military drones being used with devastating effect in Syria, but it was Dubai’s spies in the sky, used to catch litterbugs, which caught people’s attention.

But the story of the month was undoubtedly the leaking of the Panama Papers from the offshore tax firm, Mossack Fonseca. It showed there was one code of governance for the world’s elite, super-rich bankers and another one entirely for the rest of us.

In May, the jungle force was with me as I trekked with my family through Borneo into Indonesia.

‘The Donald’ was being trumped by the Rolling Stones who told him he couldn’t get what he wanted and banned him from playing their songs at his pre-election rallies.

This Donald, though, returned from the jungle to cycle 50 miles, helping raise more than £10,000 for Nordoff Robbins Scotland.

Unfortunately, the month will be infamously remembered for the shocking scenes at the end of the Scottish Cup final.

If that was bad then what was to follow in June at football’s European Championships was sickening as hordes of angry hooligans went on a drunken rampage in France.

Scotland were, thankfully, not in attendance – having scuppered any chance of ever being big players in Europe. Something which, politically, we will now be hard-pressed to achieve after the UK sensationally voted to leave the EU.

If winning was the aim then Team GB’s Olympians did it as well as anybody, collecting more gold bling in August than a hip-hop act.

Outgoing PM David Cameron decided he would make winners out of losers by bestowing honours on his loyal, losing band of Remainers.

For music fans here in Scotland, indeed around the globe, it was the loss of the popular Wickerman festival and the deep rumblings that T in the Park might be about to head the same way that was causing a lot of earache.

Sadly, we now know that next year’s festival has been cancelled.

September had us all going off the rails at ScotRail – and we still are.

Being called a “Jock” was no joke in October when Ofcom incredibly ruled that as a term it was as offensive as being called a “Hun”.

The broadcasting regulator did make one great ruling, though – announcing that my team’s bid for a Scottish rock radio station had been successful. Yippee!

A pre-Halloween scary clown craze dominated news coverage in October.

But my “month of the year” award goes to November.

Against all the odds, all reasoning, all the detractors in his own party, all the unsavoury accusations, all that the big machine could throw at him … rank outsider Donald J Trump trumped Hillary Clinton at the polls to become the next President of the United States.

Love him or loathe him, he pulled off the impossible.

So we’ve all made it to December safe and sound. I’m not covering this month as it’s all a bit too recent and we wouldn’t want the unions to try to ruin what’s left.

I wish you all a prosperous and happy New Year.