IT’S surprisingly unremarkable how much Winston Churchill crops up in our daily discourse. He was, of course, some boy, as attested by the fact that, even in a newspaper column, I don’t have to explain who he was.
By way of critical assessment, we may say that, on the plus side, he won the war single-handedly against the Nazis – when he died in 1965, I asked my mother if the Germans would invade us now – while, on the negative side, he could be a right brute towards the proletariat.
Speaking of whom, Churchill cropped up in my life earlier this week when I was invited to agree that a baby (on television) was beautiful, and found myself being banjoed on the heid with a frying pan after I described the beast as hideous. Well, they all are. As I told my assailant, they all look like Winston Churchill. Rather than being cute like puppies and kittens, human babies resemble weird aliens which, in a surprise development, brings me to my point, in the loosest sense of the word.
For, in the latest news about 1939, it has emerged that Churchill wrote an essay that year expressing a belief in alien life elsewhere in yonder universe. While many think so much of this was owed to his having had a few, the piece is remarkably scientific and full of erudite tomfoolery about life, breeding and water.
It was destined for publication in the News of the World, not then the favourite reading of errant vicars and dubious scoutmasters, but something that had news about the world in it. However, the piece never saw the light of day, probably because the editor of that learned publication weighed up who was more likely to invade first – the aliens or the Nazis – and concluded that a betting man would back the latter.
Still, the unearthing of the essay – in, as you would expect, a museum in Missouri – highlights a little known fact about Big Win: he was right interested in science. Indeed, he became the first prime minister to appoint a science adviser and provided government funding for various laboratories. He even read books by HG Wells about Martians with long legs and whatnot. Indeed, he wrote his essay just a year after a broadcast drama of The War of the Worlds had Americans running aboot the streets in panic because they thought it was real. Boy, they sure knew how to do fake news back then.
We’re more sophisticated now – ken? – and science has become sexy, though somebody needs to write a scientific paper about why so many boffins still have syphilis of the personality.
Speaking of which, Churchill’s successor as top world statesman, Donald Trump, was reported yesterday to be contemplating sending more people to the Moon. Probably CNN and the New York Times. It’s unsurprisingly remarkable how we gave up on bunging people forth to yonder lunar lump. Secretly, I think it relates to the dawning realisation that all the planets we have photies of look rubbish. Space, the final frontier, is hardly worth the bus fare.
It’s no wonder the aliens want to come here. Perhaps we’ll have to build a wall. Personally, I’d look forward to them meeting our world leaders, Madonna and Beyoncé.
Like everything else in life, the universe and everything, though, the aliens will be a disappointment. For a start, they’ll struggle to look any weirder than the stuff in the bottom of our oceans. Or Jeremy Clarkson. The best we can hope for is a heid that juts oot a bit at the back. Like politicians, they’ll promise us the Earth and fail to deliver, developing instead a taste for dancing girls and hard liquor.
As hinted at earlier, Churchill wasn’t averse to inhaling the odd vat of sherry, but at least he delivered on wotsname – freedom – which is why we still discuss him today, even if he did look like a peculiarly unprepossessing infant.
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