Good evening, and… can you hear me? Sorry, I thought I was muted. Good evening, and thank you for joining me via this video link. I am currently inside the crater of an active volcano and therefore unable to join you in person, but I trust that the pub function room is comfortable and that the buffet of assorted crisps and corn-based snack foods are going down well.

My name is His Holy Eminence The Right Honourable Lieutenant Colonel Professor Lord Sir Elbert Louche, QC (Retired), KBE (Retired, Reinstated), KVCO. It is my great pleasure to have the honour of presenting this, the twelfth annual State of the Beans Address.

In my new role as Dean of the Faculty of Abstract Content Generation at the new Metropolitan University of Influencers, I have led my department in ground-breaking research in finding and measuring, for the first time, the subatomic particles that form blog posts. These particles exist all around us but until now have been purely theoretical. On our current mission, we are attempting to discover how many Instagram reels could be generated if only selfie-taking microbloggers could have unrestricted access to the caldera of this active volcano.

However, in our spare time, we were able to have a look at the Beans now and then, and thanks to twelve years of amassed experience this has been entirely sufficient to get the gist of what’s been going on here and present you with a pseudo-scientific summary.

Last year, if you recall, the news was mixed: a high post count was juxtaposed with an almost historic low comment count. I’m delighted, therefore, to be able to share the good news that 2025 has been a vintage year for the Beans.

We turn first to the post count. The overall number of posts was up this year from 101 to 113, and 2025 saw the second highest number of posts ever. (The fact that, last year, 2024’s post count was misreported as 109 rather than 101 is not something we need to discuss.) We are seeing an emerging trend, seemingly sustained over the long term, for posting levels to be maintained in the 100s every year, as you can see in this graph that I have carefully whittled from my prize collection of tropical hardwoods.

We turn now to comments. I recently came across an assertion in a book that I was reading by the acclaimed novelist Jeffrey Archer that “a leopard cannot change its spots”, but – if we take, in this instance, the “leopard” to be the Beans Massive, and the “spots” to be the collective comment-posting habits of the – I’m sorry, it looks like a number of people have left the meeting, I’m not sure if there’s a problem. Can you still hear me? Yes? How odd. Perhaps they’ll rejoin in a moment.

Anyway, my point is that 2025’s comment count has bucked the trend for the last few years and the decline in comment posting appears to have been arrested. In 2025, 1,236 comments were posted, making it the best year since 2020. Against the Beans historical record this makes 2025 about average, as you can see in this model I had specially constructed from offcuts of quartz worktop.

Having examined the collective numbers, we turn now to individual members of the Beans.

Ian	Ian made 48 posts for the third year in a row, earning him 12 beans once again. He now has an unbroken 37-month streak of months with four posts, and last missed a bean more than eight years ago. We presented this news to Timothée Chalamet on a scroll of illuminated vellum and he declared an intention to name his firstborn child after Ian regardless of the baby’s gender.
Chris	Chris made 47 posts this year, earning him 11 beans thanks to a galling one-month lapse in July. This matches exactly his 2024 posting record. I e-mailed Sandi Toksvig about this and she intends to use it as a fact in the next series of QI, though she is unable to guarantee it will make the final edit.
Kev	Kev has had a remarkable year, making 18 posts, three times his total for either 2023 or 2024, and timed those to bag himself 8 beans. This makes 2025 his best year since 2020, and his second best year overall by some margin. The news was mentioned to Lord Alan Sugar who laughed heartily and at some length – to a point, in fact, that seemed quite unhinged and led to a prolonged coughing fit – before declaring that Kev was “not fired”.

The overall picture, then, is positive. Posting numbers are very healthy and holding steady in what appears to be a long term trend, while commenting has seen a marked resurgence to what we might tentatively hope is a new and sustainable level. In our full 540-page report we go in to detail about our wild and unfounded speculation that these trends are in part related to Kev’s graduation as a fully qualified Science Master.

In light of the all-round positive results from 2025, nobody will suffer a punishment this year. Ian and Chris have met their previous targets without slackening the pace of their posts, while Kev had a particularly good year, if only by his own standards. As a result we are pleased to declare that all three are joint winners and will share this year’s prize, which is free and unfettered use for a whole year of a delightful holiday villa. The property has seven bedrooms, three reception rooms, a balcony around all four sides, a large open fireplace, jacuzzi, swimming pool, steam room, billiards room, observatory, extensive manicured gardens, a household staff of eight and is conveniently located just twenty minutes from the bright lights and amenities of central Kabul. Have fun!

I wish all those connected to the Beans a prosperous and productive 2026, and look forward to the positive news in this year’s report heralding the start of a golden era of meaningless blogging to an audience of three. Thank you for joining me. End meeting. End meeting. Alexa, end meeting. Alexa. Alexa. Oh for heaven’s sake, I’ll just click it. End meeting.