Illustrative image: Newspapers. | Person reading a newspaper. (Images: Freepik) | (By Daniella Lee Ming Yesca) 
For five years now, it has been my self-appointed duty to provide Daily Maverick readers with a selection of the year’s headlines that have entertained, amused or bewildered me. I have long collected these things (don’t ask why) and have also long bemoaned the decline of the great headline puns or wordplays, which used to be commonplace.
Well, I must admit that 2025 has seen something of a revival of the decent headline. I have no fewer than seven from the past year that I consider gems of the genre (even including, for the first time, one from Daily Maverick itself). The rest are headlines that simply made me chuckle or double-take or splurt “huh?” out loud.
The rule for qualification on this esteemed list is that the headline must have appeared on a vaguely reputable news website — not a clickbait factory (although, once again, I have stretched the definition of vague news credibility to include iol.co.za).
Clever stuff
- Colonel Bogey – Daily Maverick on a story about South African National Defence Force chiefs playing golf while SA soldiers die in DRC.
- Xiaomi The Way – The Economist on the raging success of the Chinese company Xiaomi.
- Upwardly Mobiles – Financial Times on the designer trend towards mobiles.
- Graze Anatomy – News24.com on a review of a new SA Food Dictionary
- Love rats: Canadians get chance to feed rodents named after old flames to owls – TheGuardian.com
- On your Marx, get set, Zo! Socialist Mamdani wins race for mayor – New York Post
Most alarming headlines of the year
- Remote sex toys could be weaponised against users – TheTimes.co.uk
- Unruly passenger swallows rosary beads on chaotic flight to Miami – NYTimes.com
- Father uses three-month-old baby to wipe snow off car in disgraceful viral video – DailyMail.co.uk
Least interesting headlines of the year
- Which crisps are the best to dunk in hummus? Our science editor finds out – TheTimes.co.uk
- The real reason flight attendant always says a friendly ‘Hello’ as you board plane – DailyMail.co.uk
- Madikizela-Mandela’s former PA shares fondest memory of David Mabuza – EWN.co.za
‘Artificially unintelligent’ headlines of the year
- ‘AI doesn’t know what an orgasm sounds like’: audiobook actors grapple with the rise of robot narrators – TheGuardian.com.
- ChatGPT plans the perfect holiday … to places that don’t exist – TheTimes.co.uk.
- Chicago Sun-Times confirms AI was used to create reading list of books that don’t exist – TheGuardian.com.
- Regulating AI hastens the Antichrist, says Palantir’s Peter Thiel – TheTimes.co.uk
‘Thank God for that!’ headline of the year
- Gwyneth Paltrow breaks silence on socialite who fled her Hamptons home after ‘catastrophic’ diarrhea incident – DailyMail.co.uk
From the sports pages
- Amateur urinates in Rae’s Creek at Masters and says I’d do it again – TheTimes.co.uk
- Sophie Cunningham hit by flying sex toy – DailyMail.co.uk
- Great North Run apologises over ‘Newcastle map’ medals that actually show Sunderland – TheGuardian.com
- Trump opens golf course in Scotland after ‘stopping a war’ – TheTimes.co.uk
- Wales and Belgium World Cup qualifier delayed by pitch-invading rat – NYTimes.com
From our political correspondents
- MK Party ‘ready and able to fix Joburg’ – Businesslive.co.za
- Merafong municipality appoints deputy CFO – a position that doesn’t exist – News24.com
- Dr Iqbal Survé is a threat to Cyril Ramaphosa and the South African capitalist oligarchy – IOL.co.za
And in other news…
- ‘I don’t even like cheese’, says winner of cheese-rolling competition – Telegraph.co.uk
- World’s oldest boomerang doesn’t actually come back – BBC.com
- Sea Otters Are Stealing Surfboards in California. Again. – NYTimes.com
- Nasa tells Kim Kardashian: Yes, we’ve been to the moon before – TheTimes.co.uk
- Brigitte Bardot, 91, releases statement insisting she is not dead – DailyMail.co.uk
- Pizza restaurant charges £100 for Hawaiian to deter customers – TheTimes.co.uk
- Jeff Bezos alters Venice wedding plans after threat of inflatable crocodiles – TheGuardian.com
- Calls to ban naked bike riding in Britain after nude cyclist is attacked by vigilante binman at ‘charity’ event – DailyMail.co.uk
- Norwegian man wakes up to find cargo ship in his back garden – Telegraph.co.uk
- Gangster lectures German tourist on dangers of smoking in Signal Hill mugging – news24.com
- Doorbell prankster that tormented residents of German apartments turns out to be a slug – TheGuardian.com
- Is this Brazilian judge really called Edward Albert Lancelot Dodd Canterbury Caterham Wickfield? – TheTimes.co.uk
- Historians dispute Bayeux tapestry penis tally after lengthy debate – TheGuardian.com DM
Mike Wills is a Cape Town based writer and radio talk show host.