When bad things happen to bad restaurants . . .

It’s hard to wish any place ill — there are livelihoods at stake, after all — but the shuttering of the Purple Fig on West 72nd Street by the Department of Health for operating without a permit was the year’s most overdue mercy killing.

Nobody has a clue as to what really went on at the alleged French-style bistro theoretically run by one-time Michelin-starred chef Conrad Gallagher.

But the one wacky night I spent there was enough. Turn the space back into the tavern it was — and give the Fig’s hapless employees retroactive hardship pay for having the courage to show up.