Since then, the indignities have stacked up at such a rate it feels like a tragicomedy that Blackpool's motto on their club crest is "Progress".
Ukraine's democracy may sometimes resemble a tragicomedy (it is currently preparing for its third parliamentary election in the space of three years), but it is vigorous for all that.
The elites in the European Union, always wary of popular opinion, have slipped into the habit of trying to push things through the back door; the tragicomedy of the European Parliament is more a mask than a solution.Democracy is the worst system of government except for the others: that is another of the torrent of Churchillian quotations you can expect to hear in the year ahead.
The best long-term plan for its economy would be a deal with the Turkish-Cypriots to reunify the island, which would boost tourism and GDP.More broadly, Cyprus's tragicomedy should prompt Europe's leaders to get a move on.
"Our tragicomedy continues" whispered a waiter in a Havana hotel.
Against this background, the squabble over who should be the next president of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, looks an ever more dangerous tragicomedy: Franz Kafka meets Dario Fo.The front-runner for the job is Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured).
But the latest Aegean tragicomedy is a timely reminder both of how unreformed the euro zone still is and of the dangers lurking in its politics.It is true that, ever since the pledge by the European Central Bank's president, Mario Draghi in July 2012 to "do whatever it takes" to save the euro, fears that the single currency might break up have dissipated.
Somehow, the tragicomedy of California politics has thrown up a suitably improbable deus ex machina an erstwhile cyborg with an Austrian accent.
Libération, a left-wing newspaper, described the tale as a "tragicomedy", urging the party to "change or die".
The tragicomedy is sure to go on.
