Inside this week's ES Magazine: 124 Reasons to be Cheerful in 2024

If months had personalities, January would be a sociopath. Picture the scene: at the pub, Jan (get it?) is perched by the door, welcoming everyone inside with a party popper and a big hug before telling them to lay off the full-fat tonic and pork scratchings because they need to lose weight, and cornering the weak and beleaguered with advice on how to sort their lives out. Yup, January is a real bitch.

As the year gets off to a spluttering start it can be hard to remember why we put ourselves through it. I mean, we could be living at the top of a hill with Ben Fogle dropping by to film his New Lives in the Wild docuseries. (Btw: did anyone see that episode with the woman who was raised by monkeys in the Colombian jungle? Insane.)

Anyway, my point is January in a noisy, wet and expensive city like ours can feel bleak. People are short-fusing, prices are spiralling, daylight is fleeting — we can’t even have a New Year clear-out on eBay without HMRC coming for us. There’s enough doom and gloom, so we decided to compile a list of 124 Reasons to be Cheerful about 2024. Like what? I hear you moan. Well, for starters: Yoko Ono and an AI Elvis are coming to town, Larry David is back and so is the dodo, Hammersmith Bridge is reopening (definitely maybe), broissants are a thing, Jude Bellingham, Soho’s renaissance, influencers out/ dads of Instagram in... oh, and the general election.

And, yes, we did think about doing 2,024 reasons to be cheerful but, unlike January, we’re not complete masochists.