Regular readers of Halfthoughts will already know I receive letters from Prince Karl Zeis, of the deposed Royal Family of Delfthia. For those you unfamiliar with this tiny but proud nation, it lies midway between Macedonia and Bulgaria, and its finest hour came in 1745 with the victory of Delfthia and their Prussian allies at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg. During the battle, King Augustus IV led the two hundred Delfthian Dragoons in a surprise attack at the rear of the retreating Austrians, catching them completely off guard and allowing them to capture two thousand of the enemy. Some historians claim the Delfthians were supposed to be allies with the Austrians but, arriving late and discovering how badly the Austrians were doing, Augustus IV opted to swap sides. Prince Karl, however, insists this is an unfounded slur against his family’s name. Whatever the historical truth, the exiled Prince Karl wrote to give a much more recent account of events in his homeland…

Dear Eric,

It is with a heavy heart that I must share the news gleaned from my stealthy return to my motherland, Delfthia. As you appreciate, the current authorities consider me persona non grata; they fear I will lead a popular uprising and take back my crown. I have harboured no such intention, but seeing what they have done to my precious Delfthia, I can now say they were right to fear. Seeing what has become of my beloved Delfthia leaves me saddened and enraged in equal measure. The jackboot of their tyranny has marked my people’s soil for eternity. There is no time to waste. I am left with no choice but to make immediate preparations for a visit to the United Nations, whereupon I will petition the general assembly to restore me to the throne of Delfthia. I do this not for myself but for my people. Even a day’s delay will only leave my poor country even more irredeemably scarred than the day before. I beg of you to share this missive with your readers so they too can find out the horrible truth of what has happened to the beloved land of my birth. The world must hear of what has happened to Delfthia and I shall not rest until they do.

Woe, your name is Delfthia! Accursed tyrants have blighted your green and fertile meadows and darkened your blue and cloudless skies. Greedy wretches have befouled the streets of your magnificent cities and desecrated your pretty villages. Shameless supplicants have given over their lands and freedom to the despots that now disfigure the once beautiful land of Delfthia. Delfthia, how I remember the small boy I once was, running barefoot over your hills and through your valleys…

Prince Karl keeps this up for a couple more paragraphs. I hope he will not mind too much if I summarize by saying the Prince is more than a little upset at what has happened to Delfthia since he left. We will skip to the part where he starts detailing what he discovered on his arrival.

For the final leg of our journey, my valet and I boarded the overnight sleeper train from Vienna. This meant an early rise from our bunks, as the Delfthian immigration officials were scheduled to board the train and check our passports upon reaching the border at 6.20am. I awoke after a fitful night’s sleep, spent turning in my bunk and imagining how Delfthia had changed in the decades since my departure. Even so, I was up bright and early, giving me time to shower, shave and comb my hair before putting on a clean shirt and making myself presentable. As you can imagine, I found it distasteful to travel using an alias, but there was no alternative. However, just imagine my distaste when the immigration officer, looking for all the world like it was he, not me, that had just risen from bed, proceeded to interrogate me about my personage. There was a time when the hospitality of Delfthians was famous from Brussels to Baghdad, yet this slovenly oaf asked me all manner of questions, the relevance of which was beyond me.

“Where are you staying?” “In a hotel - do you think I travel first class and then plan to sleep on the park bench?” “Write down the address.” “Why, will you be contacting them to verify my answer?”

“How much cash do you have on you?” “None.” “Then how do you expect to pay your hotel bills?” “The valet will pay with the cash he carries for me or I will pay with my credit cards.”

“Do you have a communicable disease, social or mental disorder or are you a drug user or addict?” “Yes, I have a profound aversion to nosey parkers and to the insufferably rude. They give me a headache and then I have to take an aspirin.”

“Do I intend to engage in subversive activities leading to the overthrow of the government?”

Well, as it turns out the answer to that question is now ‘yes’, but what kind of nincompoop expects an honest answer from anyone who would contemplate such a thing? You might as well ask Mossad agents if they are traveling under a stolen identity and if the purpose of their visit is to assassinate someone.

This incident on the train was merely an omen of what was to come. After disembarking at Delfthia Central Station, we took a taxi to our hotel. I am sure the taxi driver took us an implausibly circuitous route, all the while proclaiming that he did so to avoid the worst of the congestion. If that were true, I shudder to think what the worst would be like. From the back seat of the taxi, I saw our fair capital’s streets were choked with cars and fumes that backed up and blackened every junction. Even so, I was glad of the detour, as I longed to see what had become of the buildings. What I saw filled me with horror. The pretty facades I remembered from my youth were now covered in advertising hoardings, with giant photographs of David Beckham selling his underpants. International brands of pizzerias and burger joints had taken the place of our cafés and bistros. The corner shops, run by local people that you knew, had disappeared completely.

It was with relief that we finally arrived at our hotel, the Hotel Metropole. This was the establishment that had, for a hundred years, welcomed heads of state from around the world, back in the days when Delfthia was a place that world leaders looked forward to visiting. Sad to relate, standards had slipped even there. The décor still impressed, but much had been lost. A horrid gift shop had taken the place of what I had remembered as the Augustus VI room for gentleman smokers. It sold chocolates from Switzerland and watches from Belgium (or perhaps the other way around, I am too upset to remember clearly) but there were no local goods, like our fine Delfthinian flaxxon hats or the famous mountain pipes played and made in the Delfthinian highlands. Hungry after our journey, I decided to enjoy a bowl of our glapclava, a dish that is never prepared correctly by the few overseas restaurants I have found will serve it. To my amazement, the hotel restaurant now only offered Thai food. Surely if I wanted to go somewhere that offered Thai food, I would holiday in Thailand? Disappointed, I retired to my suite and decided to order room service instead. That menu was equally desultory, offering all manner of club sandwiches and chicken madrases, but not a single Delfthian dish of worth. It was quite enough to cause me to lose my appetite altogether.

I consoled myself that I was out of sorts after the sporadic sleep of the night before, and that a nap would raise my spirits. After my nap, I awoke refreshed. Feeling rejuvenated, I told the valet to have the rest of the day off whilst I ventured out for a walk around the streets of Delfthia. My first stop was at the tourist information office, situated in a hideous concrete bunker directly opposite the Hotel Metropole. I asked about craft shops selling locally-made flaxxon goods. There were none, though the lady behind the counter suggested a superstore with some similar products imported from China. I enquired about the weekend polka dances in the park, but they had long since ended. This weekend there was a jazz festival, which sounded rather jolly. I mentioned that if I wanted the finest in jazz I would have gone to New Orleans or Chicago, but the lady assured me they had flown in some fine musical acts from overseas. Then it transpired the headline entertainment was James Blunt and David Gray, so I naturally gave her a telling-off for misleading me about there being ‘jazz’ music on offer. Depressed, I asked her what other tourists did to enjoy themselves. There was an IMAX cinema, showing the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie from someone called James Cameraman. I shook my head and asked about shopping for Delfthian antiques. The lady said the old market was closed for refurbishment, but that I might be disappointed with the ‘tat’ on sale there anyway. She instead suggested I could enjoy myself at the air-conditioned shopping mall, at which I would find Gucci, Armani and Jimmy Choo stores, and if that was not to my liking, they also had a Topshop, Starbucks, Boots and even a Virgin Megastore. I commented that I did not see how it was possible to have a Virgin Megastore, as all the British Virgin Megastores had been sold off, rebranded or even closed. She responded by sniffing in a very off-hand way and handing me some leaflets that promised reduced entry to an artificial ski dome and a waxworks museum featuring a new dummy of the diminutive Nicolas Sarkozy. Perhaps the waxworks were running short of wax.

Utterly deflated by this dreadful experience, I thought it best to drown my sorrows with a tipple or two or our Delfthinian wormwood liquor, or failing that, a little absinthe. Imagine how dejected I was when the only bar I could find was an Irish-themed pub, covered in shamrock wallpaper and with a big TV screen showing English Premiership football. Their beverages included no wormwood liquor nor absinthe, so I mulled a choice between Guinness, Fosters or Budweiser. I settled for a Guinness and, reconciling myself to my torpid travel experience, I found comfort in the thought that the Irish say their Guinness does not travel well either.

Dear reader, it seems you can never go home. I tried, but it was no longer where I once left it. In the place it should have been, I found myself surrounded by the tyranny of the familiar. Those rogues in the Delfthian government had sold out our national heritage for a Hallmark gift shop, a Dunkin Donuts and a Gordon Ramsey restaurant. These are all very fine establishments, in their own way, but not so fine that I never want to be without them.

Yours Sincerely,

Prince Karl Zeis of the Royal House of Delfthia

Some movies are just so good that when the plot twists and turns, you may fail to notice that it also disappears up its own backside. Carried along with the moment, you may never see the incongruity amidst the events on screen. Here is my top five of film stories with holes that gaped just for a moment, but where you may have missed the holes when you blinked…

5. The Shawshank Redemption

Andy, played by Tim Robbins, is going to escape from Shawshank prison by using his little stone chisel to make a great big bloody hole in the wall. The guards never see the hole because it is covered over using a poster of a cinema sex symbol. Andy hides his chisel in a bible, and in one tense scene the warden is holding the bible whilst they search Andy’s cell. Fortunately, the warden never opens it up, although he talks about bible stories at length. But why hide your chisel in a bible, when there is a bloody great hole in the wall big enough to hide the chisel plus an elephant or two?

4. Star Wars

After a stirring escape from Death Star, and from the TIE fighters sent to chase after them, Han Solo and the crew of the Millennium Falcon at last feel like they can relax. Princess Leia, though, knows better. ‘Too easy’ she says, and announces the evil empire must have put a tracking device on their ship. If the heroes fly back to the secret rebel base, then they will lead the empire back there too. So what do they do? They fly straight back, in the hope that they will find a weakness in the Death Star which will allow the rebels to blow it up. Flying in the wrong direction and changing ships would have been a less risky plan.

3. The Prestige

Two warring Victorian magicians, played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, scheme and counter-scheme to upstage and bamboozle each other. In a masterstroke, Bale allows Jackman to ’steal’ his secret diary. The secret diary leads Jackman halfway across the world, to meet with the inventor Nikola Tesla. The diary reveals that Tesla is the man who made a machine that can transport a man through space, making him reappear at a distance from where he first started. However, the diary is a cunning connivance by Bale - he actually performs his disappearing and reappearing trick with the help of a twin brother unknown to the rest of the world. The foolish Jackman believes the diary and tracks Tesla down in the US, finally persuading the reluctant but penniless inventor to meet with him. Desperately needing Jackman’s money, Tesla agrees to build Jackman a transporting machine, which works pretty darned well (apart for one unfortunate side-effect). How unlucky for Bale! He intended to send Jackman on a wild goose chase, but in the end he pointed him at the one man in the world who could build a machine that actually does magic. What were the odds on that?

2. Alien

In space, no one can hear you scream. You are being chased by an alien monster. It is strong. It is covered in armour. Its has a tail that can slice you in two. It has an extra set of jaws for biting you when the first set does not get the job done. It has acid for blood. To sum it up, killing this alien is going to be hard. But in space, no one can hear you scream because there is no atmosphere. So how do the hapless humans try to fight off this one-alien apocalypse? They use flamethrowers and other weakling weapons. Why not try switching off the atmosphere and allowing the otherworldly bugger to suffocate instead?

1. The Fast and The Furious

The starter for this high-octane car racing franchise starred Vin Diesel as the gang leader who boosts a lot of electronic equipment to pay for the modifications that boost his automobiles. However, in the craziest scene of the movie, Vinnie needs to escape the police following a street race. He hides his precious car in a garage, then high-tails it away on foot. A police car spots Vinnie and chases him. Remarkably, Vinnie manages to outrun the police car, and he makes his getaway. What were the moviemakers trying to say with this incongruous scene? Perhaps they were saying that feet are fleeter than the furious automobiles of this car-studded feature. Or perhaps they were saying that Diesel is faster than petrol…

Four years ago, a meeting of high-level representatives of the government, military, and the intelligence services sat down to address matters of growing concern. After 9/11, 7/7, avian flu, swine flu, foot and mouth, cyberattacks, superbugs, and tsunamis, they were worried at repeated failures to anticipate and plan for unforeseen dangers to the state and to the public. Their response was to a create a super-secret organization, codename Dionysos. The motto of Dionysos is ’specto subitus’ or ‘expect the unexpected’. Dionysos is dedicated to forecasting and preparing for contingencies that nobody - and they really mean nobody - has ever worried about before. Believing that Dionysos was planning for an alien invasion, ufologists infiltrated the organization. The truth was even more shocking than they had dared imagine. What follows is a transcript of a secretly recorded meeting held by the Dionysos governance committee.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Shall we begin? There’s some coffee at the back if people want to help themselves.

Colonel Spindle: No biscuits this time? Are we making cutbacks? I’m famished. I need a bourbon, or a custard cream or two.

Lady Mantlebrat: No, no, the absence of biscuits has nothing to do with budgets. We’ve had to suspend biscuit buying pending further investigation.

Prof. Palindrome: If I may, Virginia. Colonel, it occurred to us that the cream filling of certain kinds of biscuit - like the bourbons and custard creams you mention - could be deliberately tainted with genetically-modified psychotropic substances that are keyed to the DNA of a specific individual. In most cases the biscuit would be perfectly harmless. But if the individual with the matching DNA ate the modified biscuit, they would suffer powerful and disturbing hallucinations. The hallucinations would be so vivid and emotionally compelling that they make an LSD trip seem like an animated movie by The Beatles. Onlookers would assume the victim had gone completely mad and would have no way of telling it was down to the biscuit, as they would have eaten from the same biscuit plate but be completely unaffected.

Colonel Spindle: Didn’t the CIA try the same thing on Castro? Something about spiking his cigar in the hope he’d smoke it, go on telly and seem totally off his rocker.

Prof. Palindrome: Yes, but the cigars were crude and it was easy to detect the drugs. The beauty of the DNA-encoded biscuits is that the drug would be very hard to detect and there would be no effect on others eating the biscuit. So if one of us went complete bonkers, nobody would suspect that the real culprit was the chemical cocktail hidden in the custard cream.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: But I thought those Beatles films were supposed to be rather like an LSD trip… not that I’ve ever had one myself… with all those stories about blue meanies and yellow submarines and Lilly flying her kite.

Prof. Palindrome: By the standards of their day, The Beatles’ flirtations with drug culture were very radical, but modern teenagers are not so easily impressed. If it’s not a 3-D epic by James Cameron about giant blue people piloted by virtual reality, then the kids simply don’t treat it as realistic.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: What about ginger nuts?

Prof. Palindrome: Excuse me?

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Ginger nuts, or digestive biscuits - surely they’re safe as they have no cream filling?

Prof. Palindrome: Until we’ve devised a foolproof test, we think it’s better to err on the side of caution and avoid biscuits of any description. We can’t be sure if the drugs are limited to cream fillings as we’ve never had an actual case of this happening and there’s no proof that the technology exists. But we’re still urgently working towards the method to detect it. Better safe than sorry.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Weren’t we supposed to be investigating something to do with that three-dimensional thingy… what was it? Something about the potential to send even more powerful and undetectable subliminal messages to viewers because each eye got a different blip-coded instruction that only makes sense when combined with the blip-code instruction received by the other eye?

Prof. Palindrome: Ah, yes. You see… (interrupted)

Lady Mantlebrat: Gentlemen, please, let’s get back to the agenda, shall we? I’ve asked Dr. Delia Dingle to join us today, so she can talk to us about the risks of collisions with objects from outer space.

Colonel Spindle: So where is she then?

Lady Mantlebrat: I don’t know, and that’s what I’m worried about.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Do you think she could have been kidnapped?

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: What about jaffa cakes then?

Lady Mantlebrat: Willie?

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Jaffa cakes. Strictly speaking, they’re not biscuits. Are they safe from the super-LSD-DNA stuff?

Colonel Spindle: Good idea, Willie. Let’s get some jaffa cakes in, shall we? They’re not biscuits and I really am famished.

Prof. Palindrome: Whilst the jaffa cake is, indeed, a cake, I think it still poses a risk.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: We need to ask ourselves if any cake can be considered 100% safe. I’m inclined to think not.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: The question is moot, as we do not have departmental budget to serve cake.

Prof. Palindrome: Marjorie makes a good point. We should extend our research, and our internal ban, to cover the possibility of DNA-encoded hallucinatory cakes in addition to DNA-encoded hallucinatory biscuits.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Jaffa cakes could be bought under the biscuit budget, surely?

Colonel Spindle: This doesn’t sound like an especially new threat to me. In my youth I visited Amsterdam and purchased some baked goods - brownies I think they were called at the shop - that were made with marijuana in them. I think they called them hash brownies.

Prof. Palindrome: These new DNA-encoded psychotropic… (interrupted)

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Please, please gentlemen. If you wanted to talk about biscuits you should have put them on the agenda. This will have to wait to Any Other Business.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: I thought biscuits were a standing item for this meeting (chortles to himself).

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Willie, please let’s return to the agenda, shall we? We need to consider what might have happened to Dr. Dingle.

Colonel Spindle: Maybe she went to the movies and got a subliminal message telling her to fly to Moscow or some such.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Maybe there never was a Dr. Dingle. She could have been a robot imposter.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: What about birthday cakes? Surely we’ve got budget for that? Does the ministry expect us to chip in and buy the staff birthday cakes out of our own pockets?

Prof. Palindrome: I think we also need to consider another, even more chilling possibility. Perhaps Dr. Dingle is in the room with us, right now.

Colonel Spindle: How so? Are you saying she might be invisible?

Prof. Palindrome: Not just invisible, but completely out of phase with ordinary matter, so that she wasn’t interacting with any devices that could be used to detect her presence. If she had been converted to dark matter, then Dr. Dingle would have no interaction with the universe as we perceive it. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility - she was working in the field of dangers from outer space. Perhaps she was the target of aliens who wanted to stop her work?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Really, Professor. I think you’re getting a bit carried away. She was investigating what to do about comets and meteors hitting our planet, not alien invasions! And you know full well that contingency planning for alien invasions is outside of our scope. Responsibility for that lies with those nice people who work in New Mexico and who we otherwise don’t mention.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Might I possibly be a robot imposter?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: No, Willie. You’re all too unique.

Colonel Spindle: We should still take a look into this dark matter conversion theory of Professor Palindrome. If somebody made of dark matter would not register on any scientific device, they would travel through our world completely undetected. They’d be the perfect spy.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: If I understand correctly, the thing about dark matter is that it doesn’t interact with anything else, like ordinary matter or even light. So if light passes right through a dark matter person, that would surely mean they must be blind - because the light wouldn’t hit the back of their retina?

Prof. Palindrome: Ah, yes. Good point. Perhaps we can afford to discount the conversion of people into dark matter for the moment.

[Dr. Delia Dingle enters the room.]

Dr. Dingle: Sorry I’m late. My train was delayed.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Oh, there you are. You didn’t call to warn us you wouldn’t be on time.

Dr. Dingle: (Pulls out her mobile phone and waves it) Didn’t you get my message?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: No. No I didn’t. (She reaches into her handbag for her own mobile phone. After searching around she pulls it out). That’s funny - there’s no signal in here.

Prof. Palindrome: I’m afraid I hadn’t had chance to warn you about that. As you’ll see, it’s item number eight on the agenda: mobile telephony safety risks.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Professor, our purpose is to deal with the unexpected, not the expected. Surely there are plenty of mainstream researchers looking into the health and safety aspects of mobile telephones - and what exactly have you done to block my reception? It was fine yesterday.

Prof. Palindrome: Very true, Lady Virginia, but I was more concerned that the signals might be intercepted and decoded.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. Might they be used to hold this dark matter stuff?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Please Willie, I don’t think The Beatles did a reliable geographic survey for the sake of writing ‘A Day in the Life’.

Colonel Spindle: (Angry) Of course mobile radio signals can be decoded. The thing is, only a blithering idiot would do such a thing. Have you ever listened to what the average person jabbers on about whilst on the telephone? What happened last night on Eastenders and who’s next for the bushtucker trials on Celebrity Come Ice Dancing. Who’d want to listen to all that guff? In the secret services we’ve got thousands of people employed to listen in to ordinary people’s conversations, and speaking as someone who’s listened in to them listening in, I can tell you, it’s a complete waste of time. So you can bloody well switch my phone back on, right now.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Colonel, Professor, please, please.

Prof. Palindrome: Does the rest of the committee agree with Colonel Spindle…?

[Mutters of approval.]

Prof. Palindrome: Very well, I’ll stop jamming the signal as soon as the meeting is over.

Colonel Spindle: Can’t you do it now, and fetch some sandwiches whilst you’re out? I’m surprised you can’t all hear my stomach rumbling.

Lady Mantlebrat: Now, please, let’s get back to the agenda, shall we? Dr. Dingle has kindly joined us today to tell us about the probability of an object from space colliding with earth and causing a disaster. Dr. Dingle, if you please…

Dr. Dingle: Though it’s the stuff of movie blockbusters, the possibility of a comet or meteor striking earth…

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: (aside) Yes, that ‘Abattoir’ movie by David Cameron. 3D. Very good. Went with the grandkids. Slept right through it but the littl’uns said they loved it.

Dr. Dingle: … is so small we can effectively ignore it…

Lady Mantlebrat: Excuse me, but I don’t think we can. Everyone else can ignore it, but we at the Dionysos Institute can’t. We’re here to consider all those outlandish possibilities which, when they do happen once in a blue moon, cause people to say: “somebody should have planned for this” even though nobody else would. And that’s what we do. “Specto subitus”!

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Virginia’s absolutely right. Roads freezing over and needing grit, bankers getting big bonuses after we bail them out, making a pigs ear out of the Olympics and finding someone in the private sector to take the blame - we need to think the unthinkable and do the undoable.

Lady Mantlebrat: No, no, no, Willie! None of that has anything to do with us. All of those are perfectly foreseeable which is why we allow others to take responsibility for those foul-ups. We only take responsibility for foul-ups that were so hard to predict that only an insane person would worry about them. That’s why we have to plan for collisions with comets and the like, even if the possibility is so small we should ignore it.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: You’re right, Virginia. I spoke out of turn. We’re here to consider the inconsiderable but not to ignore the ignorable.

Lady Mantlebrat: Quite.

Dr. Dingle: Well you don’t really need to worry about space collisions, because the Russians have a plan that involves using space probes to change the trajectory of any large object heading towards earth. They intend to slowly and steadily divert its course so it will miss. It’ll cost them billions of rubles to implement, so it’s better to leave it to them.

Lady Mantlebrat: We can’t afford to allow the safety of taxpayers to be left to a foreign power. That’s why we’ve already agreed on funding to create our own solution. Isn’t that right Professor?

Prof. Palindrome: It is. In fact, we’ve recently doubled the amount we’re spending on it.

Colonel Spindle: Doubled, you say?

Prof. Palindrome: Yes, we redirected the money saved on biscuits for meetings.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Am I wrong, but I thought the New Mexicans dealt with dangers from space, not us.

Lady Mantlebrat: They only deal with aliens, Willie. We deal with non-living threats from outer space.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: What about spores?

Lady Mantlebrat: What about them?

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Spores from outer space - do they count as a living or non-living threat? Spores are inert but they have the potential to create new life.

Lady Mantlebrat: Well, Marjorie, I’d have to consider them as living threats rather than lifeless threats, but you raise a good point. I’ll take an action to speak with our friends in New Mexico who we otherwise don’t mention and ask if we or they should be dealing with spores from space.

Colonel Spindle: I’m very sorry, but I’m terribly hungry and it’s almost lunchtime. I motion that we adjourn to the Old Bull and Bush and reconvene after we’ve had a spot to eat.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Seconded.

Lady Mantlebrat: Gentlemen! It’s only ten to twelve. I’ll tell you what, let’s quickly run through the items to add to the new threats list and then we can go down the pub with Dr. Dingle; she can explain to us more about averting meteor strikes whilst we’re eating.

Colonel Spindle: Very well. I’ll get the ball rolling by offering some new threats to consider: virulent new strains of rabies infecting sheep and causing them to go on a killing spree; Twitter being taken over by foreign governments and used to disseminate 140-character messages of propaganda; terrorists using tunneling machines to plant bombs underneath important buildings; red ants mating with killer bees to create an unstoppable army of killer red bees.

Lady Mantlebrat: Thanks Colonel. As always, some good suggestions for the threat list. Marjorie?

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: I was reading on the internet about how a blogger cloned himself and sent his clone to upset proceedings at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Also, I wonder if global warming will cause snow to become sticky, causing skiers to flip over headfirst and break their neck.

Lady Mantlebrat: Really, Marjorie. You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. But I’ve just been back from a ski break and now you mention it, the snow did seem a bit stickier than usual - it’s something we should look into.

Prof. Palindrome: My turn? I’m worried about the potential for Benny Hill repeats to be shown on television. This might encourage an increase of bald men being slapped on the top of the head, causing brain hemorrhages. Also, it will encourage the chasing of scantily-clad women wearing high heels - we don’t want anyone falling over and twisting their ankle. We should destroy all copies of The Benny Hill Show just in case. (Pauses for a long time, then bursts into laughter).

Lady Mantlebrat: (Chuckles) Very droll, Professor, but seriously, what are your suggestions?

Prof. Palindrome: Brainwashing from secret messages hidden in the sound of car alarms that go off ‘accidentally’; perfumes impregnated with hormones that encourage crocodile attacks; odour eaters soaked in drugs that your feet find addictive; the training of chimpanzees in sign language and to be household servants, leading them to form a competitive society and eventually to enslave all humans; exploding cigarettes; exploding nicotine gum; exploding ordinary chewing gum; and the retirement of the soothing Terry Wogan leading to an increase in stress levels and much higher numbers of heart disease and gang fights. Oh, and I nearly forgot… we should start the central monitoring of the number of cases of spontaneous combustion, just in case it’s on the rise.

Lady Mantlebrat: Willie?

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: What about machines turning us all into living batteries - using our body heat as energy source they can live off - whilst our minds are locked into a computer-generated fantasy world without our realizing it. My grandkids were telling me about it from a movie they’d seen. I think it was one of the ones in the Harry Potter series.

Prof. Palindrome: Your grandchildren were talking about The Matrix, and it’s not scientifically possible. Whatever energy humans give off as heat, there would be more efficient ways to get the energy directly from the food fed to the humans, or from the energy sources used to make the food.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Is that so? Well, then my only new worry for this month is that we’ll get a mutant strain of flu that combines the worst of bird flu with the worst of swine flu. We could call it ‘pigs will fly’ flu. (Laughs).

Lady Mantlebrat: You are a card, Willie. For myself, I’m very worried about the possibility of someone inventing an impervious cloth and hence devastating the fashion industry. Just imagine how many much-needed jobs would be lost in sweat shops around the world. And pigeons that contain miniature bombs. Imagine the panic that might cause…

When actors land a big part, they do not get much bigger than Commander-in-Chief. Sometimes the role is played crooked, sometimes played true. Sometimes the President is a hero, sometimes a fool. Here is my shortlist of the actors who set the precedents for playing the Presidents.

President: Merkin Muffley of the United States
Actor: Peter Sellers
Movie: Dr. Strangelove
Plausibility: 7/10
Statesmanship: 9/10
Electability: 6/10

Peter Sellers gave three outstanding performances in Stanley Kubrick’s pitch black cold war satire about nuclear war. The most understated was his portrayal of Merkin Muffley, the mild-mannered President who gets exasperated with his military for exceeding their authority (by launching a first strike on the USSR) and then calls his drunken counterpart, Premier Kissoff, to persuade him not to retaliate…

Hello?… Uh… Hello D- uh hello Dmitri? Listen uh uh I can’t hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?… Oh-ho, that’s much better… yeah… huh… yes… Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri… Clear and plain and coming through fine… I’m coming through fine, too, eh?… Good, then… well, then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine… Good… Well, it’s good that you’re fine and… and I’m fine… I agree with you, it’s great to be fine… a-ha-ha-ha-ha… Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb… The *Bomb*, Dmitri… The *hydrogen* bomb!… Well now, what happened is… ahm… one of our base commanders, he had a sort of… well, he went a little funny in the head… you know… just a little… funny. And, ah… he went and did a silly thing… Well, I’ll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes… to attack your country… Ah… Well, let me finish, Dmitri… Let me finish, Dmitri… Well listen, how do you think I feel about it?… Can you *imagine* how I feel about it, Dmitri?… Why do you think I’m calling you? Just to say hello?… *Of course* I like to speak to you!… *Of course* I like to say hello!… Not now, but anytime, Dmitri. I’m just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened… It’s a *friendly* call. Of course it’s a friendly call… Listen, if it wasn’t friendly… you probably wouldn’t have even got it… They will *not* reach their targets for at least another hour… I am… I am positive, Dmitri… Listen, I’ve been all over this with your ambassador. It is not a trick… Well, I’ll tell you. We’d like to give your air staff a complete run-down on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes… Yes! I mean i-i-i-if we’re unable to recall the planes, then… I’d say that, ah… well, ah… we’re just gonna have to help you destroy them, Dmitri… I know they’re our boys… All right, well listen now. Who should we call?… *Who* should we call, Dmitri? The… wha-whe, the People… you, sorry, you faded away there… The People’s Central Air Defense Headquarters… Where is that, Dmitri?… In Omsk… Right… Yes… Oh, you’ll call them first, will you?… Uh-huh… Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you, Dmitri?… Whe-ah, what? I see, just ask for Omsk information… Ah-ah-eh-uhm-hm… I’m sorry, too, Dmitri… I’m very sorry… *All right*, you’re sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well… I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don’t say that you’re more sorry than I am, because I’m capable of being just as sorry as you are… So we’re both sorry, all right?… All right.

President Muffley takes charge, is diplomatic, wastes no time on press conferences, speaks plainly and passionately wants to avoid war. But apart from that, it is a very realistic portrayal.

President: Dave Kovic/Bill Mitchell of the United States
Actor: Kevin Kline
Movie: Dave
Plausibility: 1/10
Statesmanship: 9/10
Electability: 0/10

When they talk about the film-making being a creative industry, they were probably were not thinking of this particular film. From the stupendously unimaginative title to the hackneyed plot device of having a character replaced by their double, the most challenging thing about this movie is watching it to the end. Why the normally so-selective Kevin Kline agreed to appear in this film is beyond me. In the story, Kline plays Bill Mitchell, the philandering President and Dave Kovic, the decent nobody who looks just like the President and ends up taking his place. Of course, the decent nobody is a caring sensible sort who does a great job as President. In other words he is exactly the sort of fantasy President that people wish for - without asking why they would never vote for someone like that in the first place…

President: James Marshall of the United States
Actor: Harrison Ford
Movie: Air Force One
Plausibility: 0/10
Statesmanship: 2/10
Electability: 10/10

The President’s security goons are caught sleeping on the job, allowing terrorists to take over Air Force One and put the President’s family in jeopardy. Following the maxim that ‘if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself’ the President is forced to kick the butt of the terrorists himself. The worrying thing is that some people probably do expect their world’s most powerful man to solve problems with his bare fists.

Presidential Candidate: Governor Jack Stanton
Actor: John Travolta
Movie: Primary Colors
Plausibility: 10/10
Statesmanship: 10/10
Electability: 10/10

It is a cheat to include John Travolta’s approximation of Bill Clinton in this list, not least because the film follows him on road to the White House, not his time in it. But the depiction of a man who would be President is so compelling, it is hard not to carried along by it. Clinton is a man of considerable charisma, and so is Travolta. With Charisma like that, he gets my vote.

President: David Levinson of the United States
Actor: Bill Pullman
Movie: Independence Day
Plausibility: 1/10
Statesmanship: 4/10
Electability: 9/10

So the aliens invade the whole earth, but apparently it is up to the yanks to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to fighting them off. The Americans do not need to coordinate with any other nation, and they get their asses royally kicked, as you might expect when fighting a race that has mastered interstellar travel and has put some thought into how they kill every living human living. Then, in rather a twist, the American government discovers that hacking can be a good thing. Some nerd finds that the aliens have not updated their admin passwords. Down comes the alien forcefields and up goes the President, a former pilot, in his jet fighter. The aliens lose and apparently the rest of the world gives them a blooded nose too, but the fighting by the rest of the world is off camera. It makes you wonder why anyone would put the United Nations in New York. Was it just to the only way to persuade the Americans to participate?

President: Andrew Shepherd of the United States
Actor: Michael Douglas
Movie: The American President
Plausibility: 2/10
Statesmanship: 4/10
Electability: 2/10

Did I say that “Dave” lacked imagination? In “The American President” it turns out the American President is a decent guy who has to deal with complicated political stuff and finds it hard to find time for dating between being a President and a single dad. There are only two original concepts in this film: (1) that American Presidents find it hard to meet women, and (2) that former sex addict Michael Douglas finds it hard to meet women. Both are extremely unlikely.

President: Thomas Wilson of the United States
Actor: Danny Glover
Movie: 2012
Plausibility: 5/10
Statesmanship: 7/10
Electability: 5/10

When Obama was on the campaign trail, there was a joke that they would never let a black man be President unless the country was in real trouble. Judging by Hollywood, they will not let a black man be President unless the world is about to end. Morgan Freeman set the mould for forlorn Black President watching as the world is destroyed, in the 90’s disaster movie Deep Impact. Danny Glover is equally forlorn in this latest formula excuse for lots of CGI and frantically screaming extras. Glover gives a decent performance as a man who cannot do much about the end of the world, and he does what any decent black President should do and makes no effort to save himself from disaster. This movie would have been significantly helped if, instead of just giving up, Glover had called up old pal Mel Gibson and the two of them had tried to save the day with some high-octane, high-kicking and high-explosive action, all the while complaining that they are “too old for this shit”. It probably would not have saved the world, but it would have been an entertaining way to try. At least they would have gone down fighting. “Riggs!”

President: Laura Roslyn of the Twelve Colonies
Actor: Mary McDonnell
TV Show: Battlestar Galactica
Plausibility: 4/10
Statesmanship: 5/10
Electability: 2/10

In the ground-breaking reworking of Battlestar Galactica, the President of the twelve human colonies was a woman. Clearly a double-X chromosomed President is only imaginable in a world set millions of light years from our own. Apart from the fact that she is a woman, the President of the Twelve Colonies is obviously based on the US Presidency. This can only leave you bewildered at the mixed emotions Americans must have about their leaders. She never wins an election, but tries to steal one. She behaves like a bashful schoolgirl when someone flirts with her, mere minutes after ordering the execution of someone in cold blood without a trial. She takes the mantle of religious messiah and is intolerant of those with differing beliefs. Unlike the others on this list, the viewer is given no clues about whether they are expected to despise or sympathize with this President. In Independence Day, McDonnell played the First Lady to Bill Pullman’s President. She consistently did nothing whilst the President consistently took the fight to the aliens. A decade later, McDonnell’s twisted President flip flops on every issue, and at times is caught loving her enemies, screwing her colleagues, and hating her neighbours. Compared to this, I would take Harrison Ford’s terrorist thumper or Bill Pullman’s alien dogfighter every day of the week. They may not be smart, but at least you know whose side they are on.

President: Josiah ‘Jed’ Barlet of the United States
Actor: Martin Sheen
TV Show: The West Wing
Plausibility: 8/10
Statesmanship: 7/10
Electability: 7/10

When the Democrats could not get a President into the White House, they could still get one on to television. Martin Sheen as the President is the supposed to be the right man in the right place at the right time. Yup, the program showed politics is complicated and full of compromise and it tried to track the substantive issues of the time. The real question though was how anyone found Martin Sheen’s depiction of an erudite and faithful President to be plausible, after Clinton’s personal failings and George W’s mangluage (mangling of language). Perhaps, for all its realism, The West Wing was the ultimate in Presidential escapism?

Area 51 is a secret military base in Nevada, where some say US Government scientists study the remnants of flying saucers that have fallen to earth. Area 53 is another secret military base, where different scientists turn what was learned at Area 51 into useful consumer products. In a surprise move, President Obama recently ordered the declassification of all Area 53 files over forty years old. For the first time, the ordinary public has the chance to find out how alien technology has been used to make our world a better place. What follows is the transcript of a conversation recorded in 1969 between two Area 53 scientists whilst working in their laboratory. Only the names of the scientists have been changed to protect their families.

Dr. X: I have been thinking… I have been looking at the system the aliens used to operate their flying saucer. Perhaps we can turn that into something marketable.

Prof. Z: The ship’s operating system? How can we make money from that? It was no good - the ship crashed.

Dr. X: We’re looking at it the wrong way. It’s good that the alien saucer crashed. The more the first version crashes, the more people will have to buy the later versions, meaning we make more money in the long run.

Prof. Z: But what’s the system going to be used to operate?

Dr. X: I think I have it. A super-duper telephone.

Prof. Z: I can’t see the need for that. Are people likely to become super-duper talkers?

Dr. X: A record player - or a portable jukebox of some description.

Prof. Z: Ditto. Just get out your LP and stick the needle on - no need for anything fancy. And if you want music on the move, just whistle to yourself. That’s what I do. [Whistles]

Dr. X: Games.

Prof. Z: You mean like backgammon? Chess? Poker? Don’t you need another person to play those games?

Dr. X: The machine can be the opponent. The research suggests the aliens were playing a game called ‘pong’ when their ship crashed.

Prof. Z: Playing against a machine? That sounds like no fun at all. And perhaps those aliens should have been looking out of the window instead of playing games.

Dr. X: Apparently not. The ship slowed right down if the pilot opened too many windows.

Prof. Z: I’m not convinced. Let the lab monkey look into productizing the operating system. Maybe he can do something with it.

Dr. X: You should stop calling Gates a monkey. He’s a chimpanzee.

Prof. Z: I’m not sure what he is since we gave him that alien brain serum. I admit Gates is a lot smarter, but he’s changed in other ways too. First he monopolized all the bananas, then he started giving them away to show the other apes how generous he is. Dumb animals that they are, I think they’ve fallen for it.

Dr. X: Next you will be making dire predictions about Gates taking over the world.

Prof. Z: Which is why we should’ve put more effort into weapons development, just in case that cheeky monkey does try to take over the world with his chemically-enhanced brain. Plus there’s always money in weapons.

Dr. X: If you want to make weapons, go work in Area 52. Like I said when you first joined, Area 52 for bombs with a bigger bang, Area 53 for non-stick frying pans.

Prof. Z: Granted. That saucer’s heat resistant skin sure made for convenient kitchen utensils. But it’s been a while since we last came up with a sure-fire winner. If we don’t find another hit soon, they’ll close down Area 53 and we’ll all be working at Area 52 - whether we like it or not.

Dr. X: You are right.

Prof. Z: I say we should revisit the alien’s use of silicon.

Dr. X: You mean making smaller, micro-sized, computer chips?

Prof. Z: No, I’m not talking about making things smaller. I’m talking about making things larger. Breast enhancements. Now that’s one technology with lasting sales potential.