Question of the Day - Who's Your Hero and Villain of the Summer?

Welcome to Question of the Day. Letting you know who you should worship and who you should hate.

So that's it; all the medals have been given out, the last British festival is over, summer 2012 is finished and we're left to mourn the few days of sun we have left before the dour bleakness that is the remainder of the year rolls around and crushes everyone's spirit.

Don't get too down, though, because, according to David Cameron, the blissful memories of the past three months are ones that we'll one day be boring our grandkids with in the same way that our grandparents bore (bored?) us with stories about getting bombed and the rest of that zzzzz-y stuff. But who was it that made our summer so warm and glowy? And who rained on the parade?

London, who was your hero and villain of the summer?

Guo, student: Generally, this summer, London was very well organised.
Dan, student: The city itself is the hero?
Guo: Yeah, the people were friendly, the traffic wasn’t as bad as people thought it would be. It was a good atmosphere.

VICE: What about the villain?
Guo: No… [a gust of wind blows her hat off].

Maybe the weather?
Guo: Maybe! The weather wasn't so bad, there weren’t that many rainy days.

How about you, Dan?
Dan: There’s been lot’s of nice stories and a lot of terrible stories, so I feel kind of bad putting anyone in front of someone else. I could say something like Christian Bale visiting kids after that shooting at the cinema was pretty heroic, but it’s not really above or below anyone else.

Surain, software developer: Interesting question. I can’t think of a specific person. It’s hard to think of bad things because everything has been focused on the Olympics. I'm sad that daylight saving is back next week, though, so that's my villain.

Your villain is time?!

Tom, psychologist: I haven’t got a specific hero, but the people who organised the Olympics were all heroes.

And the villain?
Hmm, that's a tricky one. I'm going to get psychological about it and go with myself, because I wasn’t brave enough to make more effort and achieve my goals.

But the summer is about relaxing, you don’t need to worry about achieving goals.
OK, well maybe I achieved the goal of relaxing, then!

John, writer: I just got back from Bestival. I’ve been to six festivals this summer, which is kind of exhausting and horrible.

But fun!
Yeah, I need to go home, do my washing and get out of the festival mentality, really, but I’ll make my answer festival-related anyway. I think my hero would be Tim Key, who I keep seeing at festivals, because he’s the one person who consistently makes people laugh all the time, no matter what he’s doing. He’s a big hero for me.

What about the anti-Tim Key?
It’s not nice to talk about villains. I don’t want to be too obvious and say David Cameron.

He’s just a villain, no matter what season it is.
I’m going to be kind of edgy and say Fearne Cotton for my villain, actually. Just because I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the radio this summer and I think she sums up everything about the 21st century that I really hate. I don’t know her as a person, but she just sums up that really bland, culturally vacuous thing going on at the moment. Obviously she’s not trying to close down the NHS or anything, but she's annoying.

She’s having a baby now, maybe she’ll get more heroic after that.
Yeah, that does happen to people.

Anna, 22: My brain's a bit frazzled, I’ve just been to an interview.

You could potentially be the hero of the summer if you get the job.
I could be the hero of my own world, yeah. That would be good. I went to the Payalympics on Saturday, but there’s been so many athletes I couldn’t pick just one. There was a swimmer who literally had half an arm, not even one arm to swim with, and he was swimming faster than everyone else. How can they swim with half an arm? It was amazing.

Viviana, user interaction designer: The weather!

Previously – Is It OK to Be Lazy In an Orgy?