Person of the Year by the numbers

“After seeing the crash, I’m lucky that I have come away with the injuries I have.” — Australian cyclist Richie Porte

LAST year was one when at times we all must have felt a bit like Richie Porte, who broke his clavicle and pelvis in a Tour de France crash.

In many ways it was always going to be a bit of an endurance test surviving 365 days when Donald Trump was US President for 345 of them.

But despite the myriad “alternative facts” explanations and “covfefe” Twitter conspiracies The Donald helped launch in 2017, I have overlooked him as my Person of the Year.

If it was just based on the number of newspaper column centimetres or sound bites generated, there would be day- light between him and second place in this award. But I like to think it means more than that.

Inaugural award recipient Kanye West gets an honourable mention this year for his enduring ability to generate that most First World of problems — fashion-inspired panic buying. How else to explain what I wit- nessed in a Melbourne shopping centre last month — a growing queue of people lining up for a raffle ticket for the chance to buy a pair of his Yeezy line of adidas runners? Admittedly there was a nod to Trump from another of this year’s honourable mentions, Richmond spearhead Jack Riewoldt, who announced that he was “trending more than Donald Trump” after joining rock group The Killers during the Tigers’ post-AFL Grand Final victory celebrations. I applaud, too, NY art dealer Lawrence Luhring for possibly fatally biting the hand that feeds him by declaring “There is too much money in the world” after Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for more than $570 million.

But my Person of the Year is Australian Statistician David Kalisch.

Tasked with delivering the result of the historic marriage bill postal survey, he knew that Australians weren’t going to so much shoot the messenger as forget about him completely; he said at the opening of his press conference that it was “probably the only time millions of Australians will gather to hear from the Australian Statistician”.

But that didn’t stop him from enjoying his time in the spotlight and delaying the announcement of the vote for some four minutes.

Carpe diem, David Kalisch. We can all take a leaf out of your book.