BY JOHN DREWRY

Looking back to the cataclysmic events in late 2024/25, it becomes obvious what happened. But then it’s easier to rewrite history than to comprehend it as it unfolds. Yet, ‘the moving pen writes’ and as I write this, I am already rewriting history. I’m inevitably building a picture different to the real one, because I have to start from somewhere, and as soon as I do, I put my own spin on cause and effect. It is rather like those futile attempts to pinpoint the very beginnings of the French or Russian revolutions, or the start of the First World War. ‘Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated’, write the second-graders, as though the subsequent killing of millions has just been explained.

The protest vote in general elections can be more than one thing. It can be voting deliberately for the other side, in order to express one’s violent displeasure. A variation on that attitude is to assess the least ugly baby in an ugly baby competition. That is, until you realise they’re all the same ugly baby. At which point, some voters deliberately spoil their ballot papers. Others simply stay at home, the no-voters.

Another type of protest is to vote for a silly candidate. When David Sutch introduced his Official Monster Raving Loony Party, he lost every deposit over the years. The voters were as loony as the candidate. In subsequent decades, it became a familiar sight to see all kinds of loony candidates having a go and losing their deposits. They were a fixture of English eccentricity.

By 2024, however, it had become common parlance to talk about ‘the clown world’ of politics, and how ‘the lunatics had taken over the asylum’. It was then a small step to say “I may as well vote for a real clown. After all, they couldn’t do any worse, could they? And at least it will kick out the current Uniparty of unfunny pretenders”.

A scientist once said that if all the molecules in a substance pointed in the same direction simultaneously, it would fly off into space at the speed of light. But the odds on it happening were infinitesimally small. Now voting at the end of the day is a personal affair at the secret ballot box. And while some of us are voluble about whom we intend to vote for, many of us aren’t, or else we lie. We make a personal decision, and when mass cynicism produces great uncertainty rather than planned commitment, our decisions are more last-minute, impetuous and unpredictable, even to ourselves.

So, picture a situation where the main parties have been largely ignored or derided, and there are no other large groups of people discussing the future of Britain and how they should vote, but simply millions of angry, dejected individuals turning up at the ballot box, and something catches their eye or their mood – a particularly silly candidate who makes them laugh. In a moment of defiance, without thought or collaboration, those millions of unconnected individuals across the country voted 569 clowns into power.

I haven’t the space here to list them all, but these are the names of ten key figures in a hastily-formed cabinet: Elizabeth the First of England, Grimaldi, St. Peter, Winston Churchill, Pythagoras, Pitt the Elderflower, Bismarck, Brunel’s Cigar, Little Bo-Peep, and Matron. All were male, not through any intended chauvinism so much as the fact that this kind of tomfoolery tends to come from men, who are really naughty boys at heart. Five of the ten were, however, dressed as women, not as homage to the nonsense of gender dysphoria, but to a rather older buffoonery – pantomime. Brunel’s Cigar was indeed dressed as a cigar and, with bright red hair, a permanently lit cigar to boot.

There was instinctive resistance to calling themselves a Party. They had seen how loyalty to ‘the Party’ quickly superseded loyalty to the country. Someone suggested ‘Pastie’ but Grimaldi, who was obsessed with custard pies, proposed they call themselves the Pie. This was weird enough to capture the others’ approval, especially when Winston Churchill, master of the bon mot (and black, as you may have gathered from his first name), pointed out that ‘Pie’ was how some female Labour MPs pronounced ‘Party’ as a working-class affectation. Pythagoras insisted that it was shortened to the Pi.  

Elizabeth the First of England – a man in full Elizabethan drag including the gouache make-up – had been elected Prime Minister by the House and driven to Buckingham Palace. Poor Charles, having lost his sense of humour many years previously, really wasn’t equipped to handle it. A constitutional crisis nearly ensued when Elizabeth insisted on being referred to as ‘Your Majesty’. After much awkwardness, they compromised on ‘Ma’am’. Something stirred in Charles, old memories of the Goons and Spike Milligan, the spell broke and he burst into laughter. In that moment he became a King.

Grimaldi was Chairman of the Pi. His brief was to ensure that no-one took themselves too seriously, a sort of latter-day memento mori. For this purpose, he had a ready supply of custard pies standing by. The first time a member got one in the face after a temporary attack of aberrative pomposity, an apoplectic Speaker raged against such abuse of the House’s good name, and promptly got one in the face himself. An old shire Tory, who’d somehow managed to retain his seat in the recent shock election, laughed so hard he expelled his catheter and peed himself naturally for the first time in nearly six years. 

Bismarck became Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was perfectly aware that Bismarck had been Chancellor of Germany, and that wasn’t the same kind of Chancellor at all. But he remembered that Bismarck had been known as the Iron Chancellor, and he had long nurtured the desire to be known as the Ironing Chancellor. He claimed that such a nickname would move him closer to the common people – everyone understood the domestic chore of ironing. Closer colleagues would tell you, however, that really it was a desire to sport a bristling Prussian moustache and wear a dress.

Certainly, this is how he always appeared in public and most significantly in Parliament. His budget speeches were conducted while ironing his clothes and hanging them up.  They were what you would call conversational speeches, making every listener feel as though he was talking to them in their own scullery. “So, I said to the Prime Minister, I said, Elizabeth the First of England, I said, where do you think the money’s going to come from for that little venture. I mean, after all, it doesn’t grow on trees, does it?”

Frequently he would similarly use domestic analogies to make a point.  And all the time you would hear the hiss of the steam iron, and a satisfied smile and sigh as each ironed garment was hung up on a little rack.  A shopping basket replaced the red box, held up outside Number Eleven on budget day.

On this new Parliament’s first historic day, St. Peter had somehow gotten hold of the mace, and started waving it in a frenetic, papal manner, crying ‘Bless this House’, and then bursting into song:

‘Bless this house O Lord we pray; Make it safe by night and day;
Bless these walls so firm and stout, Keeping want and trouble out:
Bless the roof and chimneys tall, Let thy peace lie over all;
Bless this door, that it may prove ever open to joy and love.

Bless these windows shining bright, Letting in God’s heav’nly light;
Bless the hearth a’blazing there, with smoke ascending like a prayer;
Bless the folk who dwell within, keep them pure and free from sin;
Bless us all that we may be Fit O Lord to dwell with thee;
Bless us all that one day we May dwell O Lord with thee.’

Sung with great gusto, the problem was he had a tuneless voice, particularly excruciating when he missed that top note at the end. It became a regular ritual, however, rather like morning prayers, so the only way to deal with it was for everyone else to join in and try to drown him out.

As there was no ‘hearth a’blazing’, the only ‘smoke ascending’ was when Winston Churchill turned to Brunel’s Cigar and said “Have a Romeo & Juliet”. “Don’t mind if I do” came the reply, and they both lit up. Outraged at first, members confessed later to an atavistic feeling of comfort and confidence engendered by the blue haze and the seductive smell (which more sensitive noses claimed had a hint of ganja, but this was never established).

At their first cabinet meeting, Elizabeth the First of England grinned at everyone and said “Well, ladies and gentlemen [that produced some snorts and  titters], what a fine mess we’ve got ourselves into, not a day of government experience between us, let alone those other 559 fellow clowns on the benches, how on earth shall we govern?” “We could always resign and say ‘only joking’”, said Winston Churchill between puffs. “But we have been chosen”, thundered St. Peter in full pulpit style, and promptly got one in the face from Grimaldi. Nevertheless, he was right. “We need a manifesto”, said Pitt the Elderflower. “Bit late for that”, laughed Winston Churchill, “we’re already in government without one”. “I’ve heard of a minister without portfolio but never a whole government without one”, said Pitt the Elderflower. “Oh, I don’t know”, Bismarck chimed in, “we’ve just replaced a government without a policy, after all”.

“Well, we’d better make something up”, said Elizabeth the First of England. “If it can’t come from experience, it must come from the heart”, said St. Peter, glancing sideways with some trepidation at Grimaldi in case he was sounding too serious. He needn’t have worried, because Grimaldi chipped in supportively: “Let us agree some simple benchmarks. Whatever we propose and agree, it must pass the custard-pie test. It has to be fun, or funny, or delightful,  or entertaining, or exciting, or inspirational, especially to a child. No matter how serious the challenge, our response must be fashioned to pass through those gates. We must use all our creative skills”.

“Right”, said Elizabeth the First of England, “we don’t leave this room until we’ve thrashed out some key policies. With just Grimaldi’s custard pies to sustain us, there’s some urgency behind it, so let’s go to work”. This sounded a little too authoritarian, and Grimaldi actioned the inevitable. There followed something akin to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, but thrash it out they did, and here’s what they ended up with:

• FREE FOOD
• FREE DRUGS
• LAUGHING POLICEMEN
• RAISE SCHOOL LEAVING AGE TO 999
• GRIMM HOUSING
• GLAMOROUS BEDPANS
• PROMOTE UNDERGROUND MOVEMENTS
• NO FOREIGN POLICY

*

FREE FOOD

When St. Peter tabled this suggestion, the obvious questions were who and what would supply free food? Did he mean food banks? “Food was always free” remonstrated St. Peter, “when we say we grow something, be it a flower or a potato, what we really mean is we plant its seed, or its bulb, or its cutting. It then grows through the invisible force of Nature, quite beyond human ability. We may process it and distribute it, and in so doing we have convinced ourselves that we created it. But we didn’t. We didn’t actually grow it. We’re quite incapable of doing that. The magic of growth is provided to us entirely free”. He then broke into a vigorous but utterly tuneless rendering of ‘We plough the fields and scatter’, which was so unbearable that Grimaldi just had to shut him up. Nevertheless, he spoke and sang a fundamental truth. We had been deliberately led to believe that agriculture was an industrial process, out of normal people’s hands, needing to be controlled by vast corporations. Poor St. Peter. This ‘turbulent priest’, like all true martyrs, was the most frequent recipient of punishment, in this case Grimaldi’s custard pies. Yet he was the soul of the Pi, and Elizabeth the First of England bowdlerised a famous saying with “Peter, you are the rock upon which we will build our Pi”. Which rather pompous remark stirred the unsmiling Grimaldi into potential action, except that he burst out laughing unexpectedly and had to commit hara-kiri with a pie in his own face. “No-one is above the law”, said Pitt the Elderflower soberly, and then bowdlerised another famous saying: “Quis custard-pie ipsos custard-pie?”

Little Bo-Peep, a seven-foot hulk of a countryman, came up with a revolutionary but simple proposal: “Let’s prove St. Peter’s point, that food is fundamentally free, and incentivise people to produce and grow their own. In their gardens. On their verges. In their communal areas. On their waste ground. In their parks. In their school grounds. It has nothing to do with saving money, but rather recreating that bond between humankind and our partner, Mother Nature. Fruit, vegetables, chickens, beehives, most folk have no idea how productive even a square of earth can be.”

Bismarck was tasked with incentivisation to kick things off, and asked to look at discounting of various financial burdens like council tax, free supply of fertiliser, seed, cuttings, beehives and chicks, to create a bond, a contract, between government and the people.

Orchards and communal allotments started to appear on estates’ waste ground in place of broken supermarket trolleys, upturned prams, old, discarded mattresses and car tyres. And very protective those estate people became of their new environment – destructive yobbery was given short shrift. Every school grew its own fruit and vegetables, Pythagoras saw to that. Hospitals, not without ethical challenge, found placenta excellent fertiliser for prize tomatoes. Roads called Cherry Tree Walk and similar started to live up to their eponymous names. Gradually, the blossoms and the birds returned. The Keatsian summer hum of bees was heard again. That damned cockerel hailed the dawn once more. So much free food got produced (you can only store so many cabbages for yourself), there was plenty to give away to city folk who deliberately visited the suburbs because they couldn’t grow their own so readily. Communities reformed and reunited. Elizabeth the First of England made a point of attending, whenever practical, the biggest-marrow competitions that sprung up once more around the country, along with other community rivalry and celebrations that hadn’t seen the light of day for years beyond memory. In the longer term, it propagated the return of older systems – small, local farms providing their surrounding populace direct. There never was anything wrong with that.

*

FREE DRUGS

This sent a controversial shudder through people, but the title rather belied what was behind it. Matron reasoned thus: “There are three problems with dangerous drugs – addiction, which is no fun and kills you – illegal trade – damaged communities, who have to live amongst the human detritus and its effects”.

Matron created Dependency Centres, modern, state-of-the-art speciality hospitals. “Fix it with a fix, come in, the drugs are free” said the signs outside. There was, of course, a caveat. Firstly, you had to want to be rid of your addiction (most do). Secondly, you had to commit to a programme of cure and rehabilitation. But this didn’t mean making a promise, or signing a form, or saying a few prayers. You had to section yourself. Like the black sheriff in ‘Blazing Saddles’, you had to take yourself hostage, holding a fake syringe to your arm, and read out loud in front of witnesses the following (laughing was fine, provided you said the words): “I hereby voluntarily commit myself to the care of the State, to be admitted and detained under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act, as the most appropriate way of providing the care and medical treatment for my addiction. I understand that I will not be released until my doctors and I all agree that I am clean”. Most took the oath, because they knew it would be followed by a mainlining of Colombia’s best, or a bottle of the finest grouse, or whatever else was their poison. Thus began the weaning process. It could be long. It could result in many coming back, having failed to stay clean. But it stemmed the misery. There was always a fallback.

Those upright souls who complained about the cost of luxury Dependency Centres got short shrift from Bismarck: “You either take this problem on or you leave it alone. You’ve already seen the results of doing little or nothing, every day in your communities. Like the garbage you leave out for collection, it needs removing, it needs recycling, it’s an ongoing issue with an ongoing cost. Be happy to pay it”.

The exit signs when leaving Dependency Centres said: “Outside, I see no junkies”.

*

LAUGHING POLICEMEN

“Whatever happened to Mr. Plod?”, Pitt the Elderflower reminisced wistfully. “I remember fat, jolly policemen coming to our school sometimes to tell us infants about road safety”, said St. Peter, “we used to stare open-mouthed at this friendly figure of authority who wasn’t to be messed with, but who’d come to tell us something important”. “The beat has been replaced by cars, cameras and remote-control rooms”, Pitt the Elderflower continued, “the beat must be restored. If our bobbies don’t walk amongst us, they’re not part of the community. And if they’re not part of the community, how can they be our friends?”. “Plod has lost the Plot”, quipped Elizabeth the First of England, “a regular beat constable should know and be known by his or her local community. ‘Morning Mrs Jones’ would be rewarded sooner or later by Mrs Jones alerting her local bobby to a suspicious incident. Our eyes and ears are out there. We don’t need intrusive cameras and remote monitoring in darkened rooms. We need our bobbies back amongst us”. The real Mrs Joneses often said, after this transformation occurred, that the blithest and most comforting sound they ever heard was that personal greeting.

The Pi drafted a new oath to be taken by constables: “I do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve my local community in the office of beat constable, with good humour at all times and especially in the face of adversity. I will share jokes with the locals and appear as often as practical at children’s parties, where I will laugh a great deal. With a grin on my face and the help of my local community, I will assiduously seek and arrest criminals who hurt people or property”.

The Pi was not naïve, and knew there would be times when a beat constable would need to call for back-up, and the vehicles were therefore reserved for specialised rapid-response units. Although these police were called to deal with serious situations, it was decided to change the sirens to the laughter recorded from the original ‘Laughing Policeman’ song: “Oo ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha”.

Surveillance cameras ceased to be used, fell into disrepair rather like hanged corpses in mediaeval times left to rot, and were eventually removed. While still up, however, there was a prize every month for the funniest or silliest gurning or comic performance recorded by them.

*

RAISE SCHOOL LEAVING AGE TO 999

This was Pythagoras’ way of saying that education should be available to people of any age. But he went much further than that. “No-one should pay for education. It should be round the other way. We should pay them.” There were furrowed brows. He continued: “Learning is an occupation, for which there should be a wage. We should pay people to learn. It should be viewed just like an attractive job. I propose Paid As You Learn (PAYL)”.

It was a simple enough premise. Anyone who was unemployed, either through age or circumstance, could go to school and be paid for doing so. But it was always a choice, never a diktat. Thus, children were paid to go to school. Playing truant meant no payment. Bad behaviour meant no tuition and therefore no payment. Jobless teenagers hanging around street corners or shopping malls were unpaid by choice. On the other hand, someone losing their job could fall back on the safety net of PAYL immediately. Single mums could go to school with their kids and all be paid. No-one needed to beg – go to school for the day, have the money to pay for digs and sustenance afterwards. Senior citizens could supplement their pensions. Classes inevitably ended up far more mixed affairs, both in sex and age, more related to educational levels. Thus a profound sense of community crept into the educational environment.

“Sounds expensive”, said Bismarck, but he was a tad slow on the uptake, and most of the others had already got there. “Of course”, said Elizabeth the First of England, “we’ve just effectively eliminated child benefit, unemployment benefit, housing benefit, even a lot of disability benefit”. The technology was simple. Everybody had a swipe card. Swipe in at the beginning of the school day, swipe out at the end, learning fee credited to the card and immediately spendable.

“I like it”, said Bismarck, “I like it a lot. But more teachers will be required, and more schools”. “Indeed”, replied Pythagoras, “but teaching, you know, is the easiest job in the world. Most of what you do, or should be doing, is answering questions, and putting fun and humour behind your answers. A question gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and the sharing of it. But the pupil feels a key part of the interrogative process”. He reminded everyone of the preponderance for tiny children to ask interminable questions. “The worst thing parents can do”, he said, “is to ignore them or tell them to shut up. This is their fresh brains craving knowledge and understanding. The more questions you answer, the brighter they’ll grow up”.

In accordance with these views, Pythagoras created far more relaxed environments of smaller classes, more comfortable seating, more free-range discussion and, crucially, more fun and games. “And we mustn’t forget to combine mathematics with music”, he pointed out, “they are much the same thing, the music of numbers and the numbers in music”.  “As with architecture”, Brunel’s Cigar chipped in, “wasn’t it Schlegel who said that architecture was frozen music?” They all agreed that on that basis there was some pretty discordant stuff around nowadays.

The range of subjects inevitably expanded, and they all agreed about freedom to choose, with guidance always available but never forced. “Our job is to steer them towards a love of learning, and to tell them that their job is to do better than we have done”, said Pythagoras. Matron insisted, however, on just one compulsory subject – first aid. “Everyone must learn how to look after each other, from 5 upwards, obviously in accordance with their age and level of competence and understanding. I also insist on free lunches for every student, and the resurrection of dinner ladies”.

*

GRIMM HOUSING

“We’ve got to be seen to be doing something about what they call the housing crisis”, said Elizabeth the First of England, “how do you provide thousands of new homes quickly, and without draining Bismarck’s purse?” “You’ve just answered your own question”, replied Brunel’s Cigar, “our forbears managed it in wartime”. “You mean prefabs?”, said St. Peter excitedly, “my aunty lived in a prefab until she died, said it was the warmest, most comfortable home ever, she loved it. Built originally as a fast, temporary measure, they endured until they were pulled down decades later in a wanton act of vandalism”. His lip began to tremble, as did Grimaldi’s custard-pie hand.

“If you construct with prefabricated, modular parts, you can build a home in a day”, said Brunel’s Cigar, “but that doesn’t mean they’d have to look like glorified portacabins, or that they’d have to all look the same. Just because we have to work with prefabricated constructs doesn’t mean we can’t be varied and imaginative. I can work with some creative designers to produce fairy-tale homes and estates, some hobbit homes with circular front doors, woodcutters’ cottages, toadstool dwellings. Imagine living on an estate called Bag End, or Barleycorn village, or Wonderland. A bit Disneyish maybe, but putting some colour back into everyday living”. “There’s a very simple benchmark”, said Grimaldi, “would children like to live in such dwellings? You already know the answer”.

Thus, just like mushrooms, homes sprung up magically almost overnight, like opening the pages of a children’s picture book. There was no shortage of applicants.

*

GLAMOROUS BEDPANS

Matron had a male, stentorian voice that boomed through the corridors of the NHS and was more intimidating than Hattie Jacques. Unable to get any sense from CEOs, managerial and administrative staff of hospitals and hospital trusts when asked what they contributed to a hospital environment, they were all offered nurses’ jobs, which most, but not all, declined and they left. Matron made it clear that nurses ran hospitals, and the only hierarchy was Matron. Each hospital was declared independent, a matron was installed in each, and nurses’ salaries were doubled, using the savings from abolishing corporate and administrative structures. Degrees were also abolished, and more attention paid to Florence Nightingale’s assertion that the primary mark of a good nurse was character. All the learning would be on the job.

“What happened to all the flowers?”, bellowed Matron, following another of Florence’s observations that fresh flowers raised the spirits of recovering patients. A national scramble for vases ensued, and fresh flowers every day, in the public areas as well as the wards, worked an overnight magic across the land and illustrated how formidable and unfriendly hospitals had become without them.

“You are the hospital”, Matron told nurses, “and when patients enter your hospital, all I want them to see are nurses. A nurse greets them at reception, a nurse directs or takes them as required, a nurse cleans the wards and corridors. In short, a nurse nurses them through the whole hospital experience. I’m doubling your salaries so you can become real nurses, experienced in all aspects of a hospital. You’ll each have a rota that includes reception, pharmacy, radiography & scanning, operation-room duties, A+E, cleaning, going out with the ambulances and, of course, caring for your patients at the bedside”.

Matron recruited the best programmers to bite the bullet and finally design a comprehensive administrative system that just required nurses’ input and was able to process appointments, admissions, discharges, prescriptions, purchasing, consultant diaries and doctors’ rounds, all at the touch of a button.

However, the most outrageously radical thing Matron did was to invite the rich and famous to come and work in the hospitals as lackeys and general dogsbodies. International footballers, TV & movie stars and other top earners were approached, and the word went round at lightning speed, because there was a unique financial offer devised by Matron and Bismarck. Come and work at a hospital when you’ve the spare time and we’ll give you a tax refund. They called it THREE DAYS PERCENT. In other words, for every three days you work at a hospital, we’ll knock 1% off your UK tax liability. Thus, someone with £50M liability could be rebated half a million pounds for working three days at a hospital. There was an indignant outcry, but Bismarck steadied the ship: “Think it through. They have to bring or retain their income into UK jurisdiction to qualify, so we collect their taxes. And they will spend here. Stop being resentful, look at the bigger picture, and exploit their wealth to our mutual benefit”.

The bigger picture turned out to be extraordinary. Seeing famous people doing menial work transformed the atmosphere of a hospital. It brought people together. Legendary was the effect on sick children of a natter with one or more of their sporting heroes, or on an old boy being tucked in for the night by Julia Roberts before taking away his bedpan. It was said that the profoundest effect, however, was on the rich and famous themselves.

*

PROMOTE UNDERGROUND MOVEMENTS

Brunel’s Cigar’s obsession with tunnels and cigars was distinctly Freudian, but no matter, he formulated a radical proposition that dwarfed the others, and would have even more far-reaching effects. He pored over various maps of the UK with the fanaticism of Napoleon and his military maps. What on earth was he doing focusing so much on the old waterways maps of the 18^th and 19^th centuries? “There is much unfinished business here”, he cried. The original idea had been to develop a fully interlinking system of rivers and canals, so that water and boats could flow to and from any point in the UK. This had been halted and overtaken by steam and the railways. Then came better roads, trunk roads and eventually motorways, and the canals especially became largely a tourist attraction. “The waterways plan needs completing”, said Brunel’s Cigar, and he set about redrawing the UK map accordingly. There was, however, method to his madness, even if you thought he was totally mad. What cannot be denied is the grandiose majesty of his imaginative mind. For remember, his enduring obsession was tunnels.

Brunel’s Cigar proposed that all modern-day travel should go underground. He started planning for tube connections under the whole of the UK. They weren’t on rail, however. Working instinctively, he knew the technology was there to create vacuum tunnels and for capsules to travel suspended in their space with electro-magnetic computerisation. On long distance-journeys, a capsule could be fired like a bullet and travel at Mach 2. This meant a journey from London to Glasgow could take around fifteen minutes.

“We create a dichotomy”, he said, with his eyes blazing and his cigar puffing, “fast transport below ground, with station entrances always nearby but discreetly woven into the landscape, slow transport by water, or bicycle, or pony, or Shanks’s pony”. As he developed this idea, one could foresee the most extraordinary transformation. Ceasing to despoil the terrain above ground, fast-moving traffic was out of sight but completely available, meaning a return to more rustic ways of living above ground, more countryside, a more leisurely lifestyle for those who wanted it. A totally insane idea. The Cabinet voted unanimously for it.

*

NO FOREIGN POLICY

Winston Churchill, perhaps unsurprisingly, was Foreign Secretary. There couldn’t have been a better choice, because Winston had a big grin for everyone and loved just three things – travel, dancing and the beach – averring that these three factors solved all diplomatic problems. His entire foreign policy was predicated on just five key words: “Chill out, man, let’s boogie”. At Christmas, every Head of State got a box of Romeo & Juliets with his compliments. They were smoked with relish, seeming to have a strangely euphoric, bonhomie effect on the recipients.

*

Thus, humour returned to a land that had lost its way. And contrary to what some people may think, humour never brings chaos. It goes hand-in-hand with common sense and the joy of being alive. Sometimes it takes a clown to remind us of that. We are all children at heart. We laugh and we cry. Beware the creatures who do neither. They are the Killjoys.

John Drewry has a background in marketing, owning and chairing an advertising agency for many years. He also holds an Equity card as a stage director and actor, and is Patron & Presenter for the Nursing Memorial Appeal.