If aliens are clever why do they never visit Stephen Fry?
IN every alien landing movie that’s ever been made there’s always a moment when a junior officer in some secret high-tech facility looks up from his radar screen and says to a senior officer: “Sir. You’ve got to see this.”
Then someone else says, in a panic, “hostiles inbound” and then we get to the great Hollywood dilemma.
How should the visitors from outer space be treated?
Close Encounters. Life. Independence Day. E.T. District 9. Starman.
Pick any one you like and you’ll find some geeky type who wants to invite Johnny Alien round for tea and biscuits.
And a bruising general in pristine army uniform who wants to blow those “sumbitches” from the sky.
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And I guess we’ve all thought the same thing?
What would we actually do if an alien space craft really did breach our atmosphere?
Well, now we know.
There’d be no attempt to communicate using lights and noises.
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No one would build a mud mountain in their living room.
And no one would let the alien phone home.
Instead, we’d immediately despatch a squadron of F-16 fighters and shoot it out of the sky with an AIM 9X sidewinder missile.
I’m not talking here about the so-called weather balloon.
That was odd for sure, but it was from China, not the Andromeda galaxy.
No. I’m talking about the three unidentified objects that have been shot down since then.
We are told they were octagonal in shape and had no visible means of propulsion, but while one was at an altitude of 20,000ft, the other two were bumbling along at 40,000ft — which is higher than commercial airliners fly.
So the speculation that they were part of an elaborate student prank seems far-fetched.
Naturally, the Pentagon is playing down the idea that they came from the other side of the universe but a man called General Glen VanHerck did say in a press conference that he had referred to them as unidentified objects “for a reason”.
He then went on to say: “I haven’t ruled anything out.”
What’s weird is that since then, we’ve been told nothing.
I know that the craft shot down over Canada will take a while to find because the government there has, for some weird reason, put its mounted police in charge of the recovery effort — haven’t they got any helicopters? — but the ones shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron should be in the lab by now, so we should know if they were full of little green men.
Maybe they were and, only now, scientists are discovering that the aliens had actually come to earth to give us a cure for cancer.
Which is why everyone is staying schtum. They’re embarrassed.
I honestly have no clue where these UFOs came from.
But I do doubt that they were sent here by an intelligent species with the capability for intergalactic, faster-than-light travel.
Think about it. If they were that clever, they wouldn’t have been trying to land in North America.
Because if you’d come all the way from the other side of the universe to have an intelligent conversation with humans, you wouldn’t choose to land in Billy Bob and Myrtle’s back garden.
You’d find out where Stephen Fry lived. And land there.
LIVING BUFF IN NORTH
OVER the past five or so years I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Manchester recording Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.
And I have to say, I’ve come to love this city.
I love the glitz and the glamour and the way absolutely everyone paints themselves orange before going out at night.
I love the solidity of the buildings and the way you see more Ferraris and Lamborghinis than you do in Monaco.
But I was there last week and it’s obvious that the cost-of-living crisis is really starting to bite.
The girls have never really worn much but, in one restaurant I visited, I noticed that many didn’t seem to be wearing anything at all.
And I kept on noticing until Lisa, my other half, delivered a sharp kick under the table.
JAB’S A FAT LOT OF USE
I’LL be honest. I signed up recently for a course of Ozempic, the self-injected weight loss wonder drug that’s sweeping Hollywood at the moment.
The good news is that there were no side-effects.
The bad news is that there were no effects either.
And as a result my scales still say “no coach parties” when I am winched on to them every morning.
So my doctor upped the dose and sent a prescription to Lisa, my girlfriend, who picked up the drugs from the chemist and put them in the fridge.
The next morning, I found four hypodermic syringes in there and figuring this was it, I pulled down my jeans and stuck the needle into my leg.
But the plunger wouldn’t work for some reason. So I found my spectacles and sat down to read the instructions.
Which said that the syringe was full of a tooth whitening solution.
PALTRY PAY IS STUPID
I'M sure we all sometimes look at the collection of badly dressed and clinically stupid MPs who roam around in the corridors of power and wonder: “How on earth did we end up with this shower?”
Hmmm. I think the problem is that if you’re bright and thrusting and clever, you’re going to leave school and get a good, well-paid job or you’re going to start your own business.
You’re NOT going to say: “I know. I’ll take a salary of £8.50 and become the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne”.
And you’re especially not going to do that if every single thing you ever say or do is immediately and noisily criticised by everyone.
Can you imagine Alan Sugar doing that? Or Sir Branson? Or Jim Ratcliffe?
Angela Rayner, however, did do that.
And this week, she found herself being berated for putting a £249 pair of personalised AirPods on expenses.
This is the problem.
I presume Ms Rayner likes to do official business while on the train and I presume also that she doesn’t want the whole carriage to hear her talking about a constituent’s phlebitis.
So it seems to me to be perfectly reasonable that she should put in a claim for a bit of privacy.
The problem is that bright kids will see the crap that was written about Angela and think: “Right. I’m going to start a plumbing business instead. Or an airline.”
If we want decent MPs, we need to pay them more to attract a higher calibre.
And we need to cut them a bit of slack when they do something that isn’t really very wrong at all.
HAS SHE GONE?
CAN’T say I’m sad to see the back of Nicola Sturgeon.
Any politician who only really has one policy in their head is never good news.
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Especially when that policy is: Screw the English at all costs.
I’m just fearful that history might repeat itself and that she’ll insist on a second resignation if this one doesn’t work out.