The World of David Lammy & other stories

The GQ Awards, the latest scribblings about the Skripal attack, and the BBC’s diversity rules are today’s top IABATO offerings. But the resultant sitcom concept I have devised will at last bring me the fame I so richly deserve.

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At the GQ Awards, David Lammy has been declared Politician of the Year. We’re not told which year, so I have to assume it’s this one. The judging panel should be taken out and Gentlemanly Quartered.

Britain’s security services have named the two attempted killer suspects in the Skripal case as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Several British media referred to them as ‘multiple Russians’, but I can exclusively reveal that this is newsspeak for two. The Economist fumed that, having sprayed the Skripals front door with Novichok ‘in a perfume bottle specially designed to carry poison’, the two men ‘recklessly discarded’ the bottle, ‘resulting in the death of a local resident’. Petrov and Boshirov have been charged in their absence, and so we say well done to our plucky chaps for finally tying up all the loose ends.

The two remarkably clear pictures of the men walking down an alleyway that could have been anywhere are the sole physical evidence we are offered about their guilt. Without meeting either man to interview them, MI5 or whoever (probably BoJo Gumshoes 2018 Ltd) tell us they have established the suspects’ arrival at Gatwick, journey to Salisbury on the day of the murder attempt and exit from Britain. The only things the SS failed to do were to catch the men (as such) or place them at the scene of the crime….which it now appears was at the Skirpals home – and not at the park bench that went on to mysteriously infect a passing copper (aka their minder) while being nowhere near the perfume bottle found by the later victim

Someone boobed when it came to “protection” of the Skripal double-agents, because no pictures of the men spraying stuff all over the front door have come to light. Further, there is no explanation as to why – thrilled with the excitement of using a specially designed perfume bottle – the two would be assassins legged it over to the local park (the way you do) and dumped the bottle. Or indeed why the shortlife Novichok found by a junkie a month later was still deadly. That’s obviously where the secret bottle design comes in. But it’s a secret.

As David Cameron would’ve said, “Let’s be clear about this”. Two very Russian men (who didn’t get the Novichok in Russia because Russia hasn’t produced any for decades) drove into the Czech Republic, found a sleeper agent with some Novichok he had left over, took it on a public passenger aircraft, flew to Gatwick, drove to Salisbury, carelessly sprayed the Skripals’ front door in safety because there were no security cameras, and then made their way back to a GRU bunker somewhere. Inspector Doris Jobsdone of the Yard then went to the spookily nearby Porton Down chemical warfare factory, and was told that ‘Novichok’ is generic Russian for ‘new stuff’ and that the sample of liquid the pointy-heads got to examine was of the Novichok class, but they couldn’t be sure which one, or from whence it came. Doris then told a German newspaper on camera a different story, and D-notices were immediately issued to the UK media in relation to Porton Down, Salisbury Hospital and the ‘gravely ill’ park bench minder who promptly recovered within 48 hours.

And if you believe that, you’d believe that David Lammy is Politician of the Year.

Several recent articles have noted the complete madness that is now the ‘diversity quotas” applied to programmes in general (and above all comedy) at the BBC. This set me off thinking how I could write something to “pass the test” by coming up with a sitcom where every possible LGBT, black, yellow, disabled, vertically challenged, female, Cuban, violent Left activist, minority religion and well-meaning Brussels bureaucrat was present, correct and funny.

However, with neoliberal ratings nutters to be considered at the same time, all the cast would have to be famous, because you know – what with the licence fee accountability thing being so high-profile these days – it wouldn’t do to take a creative risk.

The situation writes itself, really. It would have to be a police station somewhere easily imaginable as being halfway between Haringey and Muswell Hill. Nobody has ever succeeded in writing a really funny sitcom based on policing, so that’s an additional challenge I’d be keen to accept.

Casting famous minority personalities would represent a far less uphill task, because oddly enough there seem to be rather a lot of them. Caucasian actors would of course also be included, if only to add some gender balance and silliness.

I have it all clearly mapped out in my mind. The basic set-up is that all the police  authority figures are cultural, ethnic and sexual minorities dealing with the anti-social and criminal behaviour of white people. Sadiq Khan stars as the Chief Inspector under surveillence by Mossad agent Philip Green, and constantly bullied by his personal secretary Sharia Law (burqa clad throughout, but in fact a secret Nazi agent working for the Daily Mail). Also co-starring is Nina Shick as a local human rights lawyer forever defending the local drunk Jean-Claude Juncker for his outrageous tendency to expose himself and slap people after 37 Tia Marias; Diane Abbott as the IT specialist fighting hard to overcome the lazy technophobia of junior officers Jim Davidson and Geoff Norcott; and David Lammy as the fearless detective sergeant forever trying to catch local scumbigotfascists David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Ed Miliband.

Weekly love-interest is provided by John Foo running a local martial arts school defending Chinese restaurants from South African boer knife gangs, and his obvious crush on struggling female footballer Gemma Chen. And there is a wonderful ménage à trois of police post-trauma psychologist Lenny Henry, Nobel Peace Prizewinner Winnie Mandela, and her secret admirer Owen Jones.

A breakthrough out-of-the-box feature of the sitcom will be the appearance each week of special cameo guests playing two-dimensional characters unconsciously supporting the White supremacy phobic idiots against which all reasonable migrants must fight to the death in the United Kingdom of institutional racism. Harriet Harman, Jon Lansmann, Yvette Cooper, George Galloway and Royal person of colour Meghan Markle have all been lined up to play their part in this, the most ambitious media entertainment yet in 21st Century muticultural Britain.

The sitcom is to be called PC Plod.