This is supersoap!
IS THIS News of the World phone hacking/police bribery thing some kind of gigantic publicity stunt? Is it soap opera gone stratospheric?
Consider the latest episode. International multi-billionaire and media ogre Rupert Murdoch is dragged before a House of Commons select committee to answer some very awkward questions, along with his son, James.
The Murdochs turn out to be charmers. Rupert, who is 80, is a little doddery. He cups a hand to his ear as he asks them to speak up and repeat the question. He makes them look a bit silly and crass, asking minute details about one of his newspapers that represents less than one percent of his international operation.
But then he manages a few wisecracks and his face lights up with a grin. Asked how many British prime ministers he's met, he shakes his head and says: "I wish they'd leave me alone!"
One senses the select committee warming to him. Also to James who is a model of good manners and forthrightness.
And then in rushes the anarchist fellow with a custard pie. (A metaphorical custard pie – actually it was a paper plate of shaving cream). But before he can push it in Rupert's face, Murdoch's young Chinese wife Wendi springs like a panther and – Whack! – she gives him such a hard slap over the head that his own face gets the custard.
The anarchist – a comedian named Johnny Marbles - is led away in handcuffs by the cops, shouting: "Rupert Murdoch will find it ironic that I can't comment on this because it's the subject of a police investigation!"
The select committee are greatly impressed by Wendi's Kung Fu. "You don't mess with Wendi!" says one of the MPs. Sympathy seems to have tilted to the Murdochs.
You couldn't script it. This has everything – drama, comedy, family loyalty. It's brilliant TV. The Murdochs should put it on B Sky B.
History timeline
AN ALTERNATIVE has emerged to the traditional History I university course – "Everything from Adam to Nasser":
· 3050 BC - A Sumerian invents the wheel. Within a week the idea is stolen and duplicated by other Sumerians, establishing forever the principle of business ethics.
· 1850 BC.-Britons proclaim Operation Stonehenge a success. They've finally got those boulders arranged in a sufficiently meaningless pattern to confuse the hell out of scholars.
· 776 BC - The world's first known money appears in Persia. The world's first counterfeit appears in Persia next day.
· 410 BC - Rome stops throwing debtors into slavery, removing the biggest single obstacle to development of the credit card.
· 79 AD - Buying property in Pompeii turns out to have been a lousy investment.
· 432 - St Patrick introduces Christianity to Ireland, giving the Irish something interesting to fight about.
· 1043 - Lady Godiva demonstrates against high taxes but everyone forget what she's demonstrating against.
· 1125 - Arabic numerals are introduced to Europe, enabling peasants to solve the most baffling problems: How much tax do you owe on MMMDCCCLX Lira when you're in the XXXVI percent bracket?
· 1770 - The shooting of three people in the Boston Massacre touches off the American Revolution. Two hundred and twenty-three years later, three shootings in Boston will be considered just about average for a Saturday Night.
· 1894 -Thomas Edison displays the first motion picture. Everyone likes it except the movie critics.
· 1911 - Roald Amundsen discovers the South Pole and confirms that it looks a helluva lot like the North Pole.
· 1924 - Hitler is released from prison four years early, after convincing the parole board that he is a changed man who won't cause any more trouble.
· 1930 - Pluto is discovered. Not the dog, stupid; the planet. The dog wasn't discovered until 1938.
· 1933 - German housewives begin to realise why that crazy wallpaper hanger with the moustache never came back to finish. Hitler establishes the Third Reich and announces it will last 1 000 years. As matters develop, he is only 988 years off.
Tailpiece
MACTAVISH buys two lottery tickets and wins £5 million.
"How do you feel about your big win?" asks a newspaper reporter.
"Och, up an' doon. The ither won nothin' at a'."
Last word
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
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