Free 69 for 1 by Alan Coren Page A

tones: they will ask the way to the terracotta army, and find themselves ordering double glazing.
    Nor is shouting and gesticulating advisable: remember that chap who tried it in Tiananmen Square? They drove a tank over him.

Trick Questions
    O H , look, there is a new Home Office initiative. Unless, by the time this book gets to press, the editors will have
corrected that to New Home Office initiative; since that is what we might well, by tomorrow, have, given the volatility of events in Marsham Street. (Note to any out-of-touch editors: I am not
wrong, Marsham Street is the new address for the old Home Office. The old Home Office moved there last year from Queen Anne’s Gate. They did that following a new initiative which declared
that the old Home Office was sick and tired of genderist puns about the way one of our beloved sovereigns (1707–1714) found herself walking after 22 pregnancies.
    And if you think: thank God, that is today’s bit of silliness out of the way, you are mistaken. We have not got to the new New Home Office initiative yet. This is a plan to embed X-ray
cameras into the nation’s lamp-posts to enable your great Home Secretary to clock terrorists who are carrying bombs in their underwear.
    Though I have many doubts about how far this plan carries the nation forward, I have none at all about how far it carries me back. When I was a boy, it was impossible to buy a comic which did
not contain an advertisement for X-ray spectacles. It was aimed at boys who hitherto could only dream of having Superman’s X-ray eyes, which they felt to be utterly wasted on Superman,
because he never used them to look at women, this being incompatible with truth, justice, and the American way. For our part, we felt it to be totally compatible with the British way, just to
uncover the truth about women. So we all sent off five-bob postal orders.
    What came back were so opaque that not only could you not see things you couldn’t previously see, you couldn’t see things you previously could. Many of my generation still bear the
scars left by pillar boxes. Though not Gerald Finch: he refused to cough up five bob on the grounds that even if the glasses worked, you would only see Brenda Taylor’s bones anyway.
    What is clear to me today, however, is that John Reid has been thinking about this for 50 years. I do not know for which minutia of economic history he got his PhD, but it wouldn’t at all
surprise me to learn that it was the commercial structure of the comic book, not only because so many of his policies patently reflect his early reading, but also because you have only to glance at
him to realise that he has modelled himself on Desperate Dan.
    That he is growing more desperate with every passing day is surely reflected in the new X-ray initiative. God knows what the Home Office will come up with next, though I recall that the
Seebackoscope, enabling you to spot any terrorists following you, was a snip at half a crown. But, given fully booked cells and the judiciary’s enmity towards Dr Reid, how will terrorists be
punished? Sentenced to a sprinkling of itching powder, probably.

Animal Crackers
    R EADING at the weekend that the railings around London Zoo were too low to keep in any animals which escaped from their
cages, I was of course thrilled. Because I immediately conflated this news with thoughts of mink, parakeets, and global warming, to arrive at the exciting conclusion that when, any minute now, the
Zoo’s inmates become outmates, Derwent May’s captivating Nature Notes for The Times will probably read somewhat differently . . .
    As the days of spring grow ever balmier, many of you will wake to the unmistakeable sound of your bedroom windows being licked. Slowly drawing back the curtains to avoid startling, you will find
yourself eye to eye with a large head. You will be able to identify the animal by its distinct orange markings and the fact that you sleep on the third floor. It is a