A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

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No wonder the world’s soap-dodgers rampaged through Genoa at the weekend. Here’s a man who’ll expose himself to the ugliest air hostesses in the sky just for a cheap photo opportunity, but thinks nothing of helping to blow £100 million on a summit meeting to discuss Third World poverty and global warming.

(Global warming? What global warming? Mrs Beelzebub made me light the fire in the West Wing last Friday evening. It looked like it was about to snow. And why all the fuss about George Bush’s emissions policy? I thought it was Clinton’s emissions that caused all the aggravation?)

Ah, the cheap jokes are creeping in. Time to go. Much more of this and I’ll be out there with a balaclava and a lurcher on a piece of string, chucking rocks with the rest of the workshy warriors.

The really scary thing about this alleged column is when some of my past suggestions actually become reality.

A recent Channel 4 documentary advanced a very persuasive case for the de-criminalisation of heroin, an argument much-rehearsed here. They didn’t quite go as far as suggesting that it should be given away on street corners, as I did, but it was close.

Now an American tobacco company has come clean about the enormous contribution smokers make to the economic well-being of any country. Again, a point that has often been made in my corner of this esteemed organ.

Smokers cough up a fortune in taxes while pursuing their addiction, then keel over and die young before they have the chance to take advantage of those contributions. No pension, no meals-on-wheels, no Christmas bonuses for us. We’re six feet under while all the non-smokers cling on into their nineties, clogging up hospital wards and buying Princess Diana commemorative china.

We should all get medals. And free Silk Cut.

BARRY BEELZEBUB

The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this newspaper, or of anyone not planning to vote for Helen to win Big Brother. Just think what she could do with £70,000. There’d be a world shortage of fake leopardskin and glitter. And I’ve just bought shares in a clothes shop called Tarts ‘R Us.

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