Midnight. A dark and dirty patch of south London. A Cabinet minister gets into a spot of difficulty with a Rastafarian and, before he knows it, the front pages are speculating about his genitals. His days in the Cabinet look numbered. But then, the sudden roar overhead of a US jet drowns out the sound of screaming paparazzi; the nation's journalists watch as the aircraft touches down on an improvised runway normally used on the common as a cycle-lane.
Out steps the president of the United States, eager to stand shoulder to shoulder with the embarrassed Cabinet minister and offer his support to the British at a time when irrelevant sexual prying is diverting the nation's attention from the main issue of the day: proportional representation in European elections under the party list system. With that, the president gets back on board and flies home. The Cabinet minister brushes off the incident and goes on to become the most popular man in the land.
Across the river to central London. St James's Palace. Prince Charles is in residence. His mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, is spotted at a window. Soon crowds gather and start jeering. Within an hour a thousand people are bombarding the petrified woman's ears with hate-filled slogans about a horse's rump. Hastily, a meeting of officials is convened in the prince's private office and a plan is agreed.
A few hours later, Camilla Parker-Bowles emerges to read a statement to the press and protesters. In it she confesses that she knowingly instigated an adulterous affair with the Prince of Wales while he was still married because she wanted to destroy the monarchy. She did so because she is a terrorist. The relationship with Prince Charles was a terrorist act. She is now extremely sorry about her terrorism.
The people forgive her. In a spirit of reconciliation she is welcomed back into the community as a symbol of peace. Although she refuses to give any indication of when she will stop seeing the prince, people are prepared to accept that there is no point pressing her on the matter, in the interests of building bridges towards an overall settlement.
We now move to a posh house overlooking a golf course in Surrey. In it, a broken-backed former dictator from South America consults with fleets of lawyers. Outside, the families of his victims bleat a chorus of taunts while they burn replicas of his flight tickets to Chile. The lawyers soon come out to conduct an improvised press conference. Their appointed spokesman calls for calm and then carefully explains that, although his client is prepared to admit that he kidnapped, tortured and murdered thousands of left-wing opponents several decades ago, he did so primarily for sexual kicks. The lawyer then says that, although this sexual admission is deeply embarrassing for his client, he is entitled to privacy from the media and the over-salacious legal prosecutors who are pursuing him. He asks that the dictator be left alone to repair the awful hurt his sexual escapades have done to his wife and daughter.
At this point, the families of the victims back off, realising that they've gone too far this time. A priest is bustled in, the old man repents-and everyone concentrates on their Christmas shopping.
And finally to Westminster. Former secretary of state for agriculture, Douglas Hogg, is just back from a trip to Hamleys. He goes up to dump the toys in his office when he is met by two plain-clothes detectives. They immediately show him a warrant for his arrest and cart him off to Bow Street Magistrates' court. He is charged with crimes against humanity for relaxing British regulations on cattle feed and mishandling the release of information that would have helped scientists prove a connection between BSE and CJD.
He is put in a cell with Lord Soames, held on a charge of GBH for holding up research into the causes of Gulf war syndrome. In one corner is Douglas Hurd, held on a charge of manslaughter for stalling Nato's prevention of the Serb ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Denis Healey and Geoffrey Howe can be seen whimpering in the opposite corner, working out how they're going to answer thousands of private prosecutions from the families of victims of nervous breakdown and suicide.
This, then, is Britain at the end of 1998, conducting a confused national meditation on memory and forgiveness; not knowing whether to pardon the past or indict it; unsure of where to draw its line of tolerance. It accepts that gays can be in the Cabinet but not on Clapham Common; and it harangues a woman for conducting the otherwise socially accepted act of adultery-continuing the accusation even though her adultery is actually with a widower.
We seem to be living in a borderland of responsibility, with dual citizenship of both Old and New Britain. We shrink from the absolute and the revolutionary; instead we strive for a sort of vague dogmatism, a pragmatic set of principles. Each case is weighed on its merits, but the weighing process is itself subject to arbitrary lapses of standards and even of concentration.
While Italy has spent the past five years practically asphyxiating itself in a campaign to cleanse its government, municipal authorities and business community of corruption, we seem curiously unastounded by the charges of cronyism at the heart of British power. While Belgium suffered a national nervous breakdown over the uncovering of paedophilia supported by and rooted in its establishment, we continue to remain calm in the face of the revelations of institutionalised child abuse uncovered in our social services almost weekly.
We are incapable of taking a consistent, serious view of ourselves. Perhaps that is partly my fault-and the fault of my fellow comics, satirists and clowns who have created for you, at your request, a Britain where politicians are fools, where our insti– tutions are idiosyncratically hack– neyed and eccentric, and where a bumbling class system still throws up amusing instances of hypocrisy and obsolescence.
Look at our attitude to the House of Lords. In the past few weeks it has been hailed as a force for constitutional and judicial renewal, mounting principled opposition to an arrogant government and dispensing magisterial wisdom on the universality of human rights. Yet simultaneously it has been derided as the daft habitat of ancient, undemocratic, panty-hosed ill- breeds thwarting the will of the people in a desperate struggle for the survival of their own befuddled species.
Because we reside in the home of democracy, and because our sense of humour suggests humanity, we refuse to believe that an inhuman scandal as great as the kind which frequently troubles foreigners could possibly rip through this country. Maybe that's why we're so ready to condemn other peoples' pasts, while remaining oblivious of our own.
