In conjunction with Blue Monday – which took place on January 16 in case that was the day when you finally decided to end it all, but discovered that striking a match in a wind chill of minus 17 is no easy feat – CNN released a list of the happiest places in the world to inject some badly needed endorphins into our lives.

Or at least that was the excuse. We all know that even moderately right-wing American broadcasters are cowering in terror at the thought of the four years ahead of them.

So we can’t really blame them for wanting to cheer everyone up, even if this Blue Monday malarkey is just a marketing tool to sell more holidays.

Happy, happy people
Anyhow, did somebody mention happy? Of course Denmark was featured, but not the whole country this time, although 75 percent of the text concerned its repeated success in the world glee reports.

CNN opted for Nyhavn because it reasoned that happy Danes who don’t work insane hours have plenty of time to enjoy a meal with family and friends – no fast food here, America! – and that the “old port” is full of restaurants.

Also on the 15-strong list were a Thai massage parlour (now we’re talking), Ayers Rock, a barbeque restaurant in Kentucky, the shade of some cherry blossom trees in Japan, a chocolatier’s in Belgium, Table Mountain, a beach on the Maldives, a wilderness in Botswana, Wrigley Field baseball stadium in Chicago, a valley in Chile, a wildlife island in New Zealand, a Chinese panda research base, an Indian meditation centre founded by a sex guru, and a South American waterfall so nice it could have featured in a scene in ‘Avatar’.