When I’m In Charge

It is a sociological inevitability that the nation, indeed the world, will soon turn to me for guidance in these trying times. And as an individual of rare vision and adamantine will, I shall respond to the people with courage, responsibility and above all dignity. How this Novel Global Regime will come to pass, I am not yet at liberty to reveal, save to say that certain schemes of my own devising have been put in motion, schemes that I expect to bear fruit in due course…

The following decrees are just some of the sweeping changes I shall enact upon my ascension to power. Do not mistake them for a manifesto requiring your approval, nor some sort of populist grass-roots Facebookery that needs the herd to ‘join’. These are my laws and they are for your own good. Trust in me.


People with one funny eye will be forced to draw a ring round 'the proper one' with an eyebrow pencil, so we all know which one to look at.

The phrase fair do’s will carry a statutory £5 fine.

The use of the lazy Marmite either/or metaphor will be replaced with the more adventurous dogging, serving the same purpose.

Passengers who disembark from mainline trains at Liverpool Street will be required to step at least one metre from the train before walking the length of the train's exterior past all the open doors to the ticket barriers, thus preventing them from catching me in a perilous flanking attack as I disembark myself.

Anyone dragging one of them little trolley-suitcases along will be required to wear a flashing amber light strapped to their head, much in the manner of a breakdown truck on the motorway, thus preventing them from taking me out at shin-level as they weave through a crowded train station.

All mainline trains will contain one child-free coach, the definition of child being set at 'under 25'.

All supermarkets will have one child-free evening per week. Hell, one child-free hour would do me.

All mobility scooters will be repossessed and handed over to golf courses, Bond villains and the Banana Splits. Doddery old people will once more be confined to cold lonely flats as nature intended, and shall no longer menace me by hurtling along the pavement like Sir Killalot with a Tesco's Bag For Life.

All proposed superhero sequel films will be forced to submit the script to me for approval before shooting commences. Any plot found to have more than one villain without a damn good reason will be summarily rejected.

The New Zealander who sits four rows down from me will be given voice coaching to eliminate the irritating asthmatic braying sound she emits when laughing.

British actors will be banned from playing villains until such time as we have achieved equilibrium with American actors performing the same function. With the recent death of Dennis Hopper but the continued rude health of Sir Ben Kingsley, the need to redress this imbalance has never been greater.

Vampires will be compulsorily portrayed as evil, predatory, demonic fiends who will kill you as soon as you open your bedroom window. This situation will continue until children and teenagers are properly scared of them once more. Salem's Lot will be mandatory viewing once a term in all schools, just before hometime.

The owner of any dog which has a neck thicker than the rest of its body and a lead resembling a ship's anchor chain, will be castrated and/or destroyed.

Any parent naming its child Connor, Tyler or some other name better suited to a Devil Dog or an American, will be required to rename it to Alistair, regardless of gender.

The piercing of babies' ears will be a flogging offence.

The much-lauded phenomenon of the pirate will be gradually phased out and allowed to lie fallow for a period of no less than five years, to prevent it from becoming exhausted. In its place, the highwayman craze will be resurrected from the early 80's, as well as the less popular 'masked rapist' fad from the mid 70's.

Bernard Cribbins Day will become a national holiday.

Anyone found to be talking about their football team's performance as if they themselves were a player will be referred for psychiatric treatment. You did not play well last night; that was the team you have chosen to support. There is a difference.

There will be a strict limit on the amount of pink clothing mothers can dress their daughters in. Anyone found breaking the 'two pinks or less' threshold will be required to dress their girl-child in nothing but black for a period of one month.

Traffic wardens will be retasked to identify and fine any parked cars found to be displaying a Princess On Board sticker on a car window.

Citizens of the United States will be re-educated to use terms like people and human beings instead of the overused and insular word Americans, as used in official statements such as 'Americans are in danger of losing their jobs', or 'Many Americans are concerned by the state of the economy'. See also The American People.

The reason for the RAF apparently being located in the Middle East in the film Independence Day will be properly explained by a Christmas broadcast of the 1996 radio play Independence Day: UK, starring Nicky Campbell and Patrick Moore.

Anyone found to be making lazy jokes at the expense of innocent children's animation Captain Pugwash will be given a smack.

The test card will be reinstated on BBC One and Two between the hours of 9am and 3pm, until such time as alternative programmes can be found to replace Bargain Vets Down Under, Dom's Filthiest Antiques, and Cowboy Doctors In The Attic.

Car adverts will simply show you a picture of the vehicle in question, with a Top Trumps-style fact sheet displayed to one side. The use of coastal roads, gravelly quarries and sun-kissed Mediterranean fishing villages will be forbidden.

The unacceptable diminutive Corrie will be outlawed.

The ill-advised film Constantine will be retitled Hamilton, and redubbed so that its protagonist, played by the American Keanu Reeves, will be known as John Hamilton. Should this fail to distance the storyline from the British comic character John Constantine, all negatives of the film will be incinerated, and a virus introduced onto the internet to eventually destroy all known copies. A similar approach will be taken with the films henceforth known as The Victorian Monster Squad and Immortal Scotsman…In Space.

The fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square will be permanently given over to a massive bronze triceratops, his noble head raised defiantly to the skies.

The entire current season of Dr Who will be revealed to be one big timey-wimey chrono-flange, climaxing with the retroactive erasure from history of a certain goonish bowtie-wearing, rubber-faced, girly-skipping substitute teacher, to be replaced by the far superior actor Paterson Joseph, who will proceed to devour the scenery in great Tombakery mouthfuls, such as Matt Smith could only dream of in his most sweaty Tennant-slash-Troughton fantasies. And the timeline will be as it should always have been.

The post of Royal Gorilla will be instituted.