DESPOTS? YOU'VE GOTTA LAUGH ...

JOCKEY SHORT! It was back on April 3 that I wrote about the expected electoral defeat and exile of Robert Mugabe. I should have known better, but like everyone else I was swept away by the sound of silence that seemed to indicate the old tyrant had had enough.

Silly us. Old tyrants have never had enough. They die megalomaniacs.

So it is in cyclone-ravaged Burma as the ruling military junta continue to weigh up the pros of cons of saving their compatriots as opposed to keeping prying eyes away from the pillage they have wrought on their own country.

Thus I am instituting International Despot Days. Each of the world’s leading democracies chooses one despot, and the citizens of that country spend the day helping to compile jokes and sketches taking the piss out of the tyrants. No just castigating but ridiculing, satirising, lampooning, and debunking the bastards. Because there’s nothing pompous pricks hate more than being laughed at.

By the afternoon a crack team of comics and actors will be recording the best material in front of TV cameras. And the following day, the government of each democracy, with the help and connivance of the UN, will beam the resulting show to the oppressed country on a loop for at least a week or until the despots scurry away in shame.

Piece of cake.