Best of 2025 Bonus: The Things That Made Us Laugh
News can be a downer; we need people who can make us laugh, and put all that troubles us in perspective. At the Advance, those people are Clay Jones, Donnie Johnston, and Drew Gallagher.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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A natural byproduct of news consumption (and news writing) is cynicism. Humor is cynicism’s antidote.
From the beginning, the Advance has made humor one of the cornerstones of our work. It allows us to laugh at ourselves, and to be reminded that things are rarely as bad as they seem.
Here are our three favorite humorists and their best columns of the past year.
Clay Jones
Clay was having a great year, winning the prestigious Rex Babin Award for Excellence in Local Cartooning. Not long thereafter, Clay suffered a stroke. His cartoons stopped in the Advance as he worked toward recovery. As we enter the New Year, everyone at the Advance is thrilled to announce that beginning January 2026, Clay’s cartoons will again be back in our pages. While he likely won’t be cartooning every week — he is still recovering, after all — we look forward to the joy and laughter that Clay’s cartoons bring.
As for his best cartoon of 2025? It was a tough call, but we went with the “Mystery Grocer.”
Welcome back, Clay — we missed you.
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Donnie Johnston
Is there a better-known columnist in Central Virginia than Donnie? For more decades than we care to count, Donnie has been making readers’ lives a bit fuller with his tales of gardening, his take on high school sports, his annual winter weather forecast, and his always entertaining and sometimes surprising take on the news.
So we were thrilled when Donnie brought his talents to the Advance.
There were so many great columns to choose from in 2025, but one stood out for our editorial team. The great Tomato Tariff. What’s not to like about a column with a kicker like this?
See, folks? I’ve got vision and the world is wearing bifocals. I know, I should run for president and yes, I am thinking about it.
Meanwhile, buy my tomatoes this summer and smile when you pay the tariffs. The money is going to a good cause—a vacation on the Riviera of Gaza.
Peace, brother.
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Drew Gallagher
Whew! We almost lost him — and truth be told, we’re all still sweating just a little. In 2025, Drew decided to throw his hat into the Abigail Spanberger ring and begin lobbying for a role in her administration should she become governor (and did she ever become the next governor, winning by double-digits in a race that was never really that close). So far, no call from Richmond has come to lure him away. Perhaps the cost of the levitating throne was just too much for the new governor-elect to absorb. Whatever the reason, Spanberger’s loss is the Advance’s gain.
Drew has been making us smile for over 100 columns now. When people ask what the best part of my job as editor-in-chief is, I say without flinching — Saturday night. That’s when our crack Books and Culture Editor Vanessa Sekinger files Drew’s weekly column. I get to laugh before most everyone else in the Commonwealth. And I’m generally laughing hard, as are our readers on Sunday mornings.
Picking just one column was no easy thing. But we decided on the one where Abigail Spanberger, during a press conference, called out our very own Drew Gallagher, calling him “very funny.” Forget the levitating throne; after that comment, Drew’s been on Cloud Nine ever since.
Here’s a taste:
After a number of thoughtful questions and answers from real journalists, I was granted the final question before the bus tour was on to its next stop. I strode forward through the ever-thickening humidity like a modern knight errant, if modern knight errants wear Card Cellar hats (available at 915 Caroline Street) instead of armor. I declared that I was Drew Gallagher of the FXBG Advance and that I wrote a Sunday humor column.
“You are very funny, I have read it,” said Spanberger. (There were witnesses to this statement, and I have their sworn affidavits.)
The woman who could be our next governor did not look at me warily or even wearily. She said that I was “very funny.” Unlike Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I did not attempt flight in that moment and mostly because one of the members of her security team played Division I basketball at Drexel University, and any attempt by yours truly to “be like Mike” or even Rudolph would have likely led to a quick physics’ reminder that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion until met by an unbalanced force, which is how most would describe a recent Division I athlete versus a humorist who played club volleyball at Mary Washington College 35 years ago.
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I'm so happy Clay is coming back. I wish him the best as he recovers.