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About Technology –

It was the year of Keyboard Cat, the Pope getting his own YouTube Channel, and the 20th anniversary of Sir Tim Berners-Lee inventing the world wide web.

But what were the events that shaped our online year?

Helen and Olly celebrate the greatest, funniest, most influential and cringe-worthy online events of 2009 in news, sport and entertainment.

"Is this real life?" Whatever eight-year-old David DeVore Jr goes on to do in adulthood, he will surely never surpass the impact he had on the video-viewing masses with those four words.

Spaced out after anaesthesia for oral surgery and filmed for posterity by his enterprising father, his surreal monologue entertained nearly 40m viewers on YouTube alone.

Letting rip on the set of Terminator: Salvation turned out to be Christian Bale’s biggest mistake since Velvet Goldmine.

His ferocious, profane, four-minute tirade at an unfortunate cinematographer who wandered into his eyeline leaked to the web and affirmed his reputation as Hollywood’s most potty-mouthed prima donna.

Shocking, yes – but how we laughed at the dance remix.

In the olden days, making a pair of bunny-ears with your fingers behind someone’s head was the snapshot-spoiling jape.

But times have moved on, and This Is Photobomb gives you myriad ideas for what to do if you find yourself in the background of someone else’s holiday photo and you fancy making mischief.

Maniacal expressions are a good way to start; it’s best to work your way up to public nudity.

Britain’s Got Talent was of little interest further afield until, in April, a middle-aged Scottish spinster strolled onto the stage and, with her very first note, made everyone feel bad about judging books by their frumpy covers.

The clip of her tear-jerking rendition of I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables flew around the world, and an unlikely global megastar was born.

What do a giraffe on the toilet, a baby eating a rat and acclaimed actor John C Reilly have in common? They are all things which someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to have permanently branded onto their bodies.

In May, Ugliest Tattoos began, displaying the world’s most misbegotten body art so that the rest of us remember the lesson "Tattoo in haste, repent at leisure".

First reported by gossip website TMZ, the King of Pop’s passing became the biggest news story to break online since the Drudge Report revealed the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.

Wikipedia crashed under the strain of people editing Jackson’s page, Twitter shut down temporarily, then had its biggest day since the inauguration of Obama, and Jackson’s friends Jane Fonda and Elizabeth Taylor took to the web to express their grief.

The internet had grown accustomed to a novelty wedding first dance, as happy couples worldwide broke off their slow swaying to Frank Sinatra mid-verse and launched into a vigorous routine to Baby Got Back or Can’t Touch This.

Jill and Kevin from Minnesota raised the bar by choreographing their entire wedding party to dance up the church aisle to Chris Brown’s Forever.

Around 3.5 million people watched it on YouTube within the first 48 hours, and the stunt was even replicated in the US version of The Office.

When Republican Glenn Beck attacked our healthcare system on Fox News and numerous right-wingers followed suit, writer Graham Linehan began a We Love The NHS campaign on Twitter.

Before long it seemed the world and his wife (most noticeably, Gordon Brown and his wife) were attempting to outdo each other’s pride in the NHS in 140 characters; and no doubt David Cameron began to wish he hadn’t dismissed Twitter with his infamous "twits and twats" quip.

Who could imagine that the Black Eyed Peas’ infernal din I Got A Feeling might inspire students at the University of Quebec to construct the most impressive single-shot sequence since the Copacabana scene in Goodfellas?

No fewer than 172 smiley young things in turn mimed the song at a camera travelling through the campus, capturing an exactingly organised parade of colourful outfits and hip-thrusting choreography.

Etsy is a website through which handicrafters sell their unique wares; Regretsy finds the Etsy objects that are really far too unique for human consumption, like the crocheted doll of a woman in the final stages of labour, Pokemon sanitary towels, or the sculpture of an onanistic dinosaur. We did all our Christmas shopping on there…

High-class call girl Belle De Jour managed to keep her real identity hidden through years of blogging, a best-selling book, and two series of being played by Billie Piper.

Then in November, when most people had lost interest, she outed herself as hospital research scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti.

Apparently she feared an ex-boyfriend was about to expose her; or perhaps she was just fed up of everyone assuming she was the fictional construct of Toby Young.

In the weirdest battle for Christmas Number One since Bob the Builder took on Eminem, Simon Cowell’s festive dominance ended when a Facebook group set up by DJ Jon Morter encouraged 500,000 people to download Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 anthem Killing In The Name Of, preventing X Factor champ Joe reaching the top.

We hear Cowell will go anti-establishment in response, and the 2010 X Factor winner’s song will be Television, The Drug Of A Nation.

Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann are the hosts of weekly comedy podcast

They present their light-hearted take on the year’s internet events on Thursday 31 December, BBC Radio 5 live, 21.00 (GMT).