‘Here we go,’ he said, pushing buttons. ‘Look, there’s your bedroom and that’s mine. And there’s the great kitchen — and what’s Rapscallion doing with that chicken?’

‘It beggars belief But there’s a hidden camera in the boardroom, is there?’

‘There is. Mind you, the Doveston doesn’t know it’s there. I just put one in for—’

‘Convenience?’

‘Bloody-mindedness, actually. Wanna see what’s going on?’

‘Damn right.’

Norman pushed a sequence of buttons and a bird’s-eye view of the boardroom table appeared on the screens. I recognized the top of the Doveston’s head; the other five heads were a mystery to me. ‘I wonder who those fellows are,’ I wondered.

‘They’re not all fellows. The bald one’s a woman. I know who they all are.’

‘How come?’

‘I can recognize them from their photographs in the Doveston’s files.’

‘Those would be the ones he keeps in his locked filing cabinet?’

‘And a very secure filing cabinet it is too. I built it myself. It opens at the back, in case you forget where you’ve put your key.’

I shook my head. ‘Can you turn the sound up, so we can hear what they’re saying?’

‘Of course and I’ll explain to you who’s who.’

Now history can boast to many a notable meeting. In fact, if it hadn’t been for notable meetings, there probably wouldn’t have been much in the way of history at all. In fact, perhaps history consists of nothing but notable meetings, when you get right down to it. In fact, perhaps that’s all that history is.

Well, perhaps.

And perhaps it was sheer chance that Norman and I happened to be looking in on this particular notable meeting on this particular day.

Well.

Perhaps.

‘That’s what’s—his—face, the Foreign Secretary,’ said Norman, pointing. ‘And that’s old silly-bollocks the Deputy Prime Minister. Those two on the end are the leaders of the Colombian drugs cartel, I forget their names, but you know the ones I’m on about. That bloke there, he’s the fellow runs that big company, you know the one, the adverts are always on the telly, that actor’s in them. He was in that series with the woman who does that thing with her hair. The tall woman, not the other one. The other one used to be on Blue Peter. The bald woman, well, you know who she is, don’t you? Although she usually wears a wig in public. In fact most people don’t even know it’s a wig. I never did. And that bloke, the one there, where I’m pointing, that’s only you-know-who, isn’t it?’

‘It never is!’ I said.

‘It is and do you know who that is, sitting beside him?’

‘Not..

‘It certainly is.’

‘Incredible.’

‘He’s having an affair with the woman who used to be on that programme. You know the one.’

‘The other one?’

‘Not the other one, the tall woman.

‘The one on the adverts?’

‘No, she was in the series. The bloke in the adverts was with her in the series.’

‘But she’s not the same woman that the bloke sitting next to you-know-who is having the affair with?’

‘No, that’s the other one.’

‘Oh yeah, that’s the other one. And who’s that?’

‘The bloke sitting opposite you-know-who?’

‘No, sitting to the right of the fellow who runs that big company.’

‘His right, or our right?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters. You have to be exact about these things.’

‘So who is it?’

‘Search me.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said to Norman.

‘What?’

‘That thing the tall woman used to do with her hair. I never thought that was very funny.’

‘I don’t think it was supposed to be funny. Are you sure you’re talking about the same woman?’

But whether I was, or whether I wasn’t, I never got to find out. Because just then the Doveston began to talk and we began to listen.

‘Thank you,’ said the Doveston. ‘Thank you all for coming. Now you all know why this meeting has been called. The harsh winter, followed by the sweltering summer has led to an economic crisis. Everywhere there is talk of revolution and there have recently been several more bombings of cabinet ministers’ homes by the terrorist organization known only as the Black Crad Movement. We all want these senseless dynamitings to stop and none of us want the government overthrown, do we?’

Heads shook around the table. I looked at Norman and he looked at me.

‘And so,’ continued the Doveston, ‘I have drawn up a couple of radical proposals which I feel will sort everything out. Firstly I propose that income tax be abolished.’

A gasp went up around the table.

‘I’ll give that the thumbs up,’ said Norman.

‘Please calm down,’ said the Doveston, ‘and allow me to explain.’

‘I am calm,’ said Norman.

‘He wasn’t talking to you.

‘As we all know,’ the Doveston said, ‘no matter how much money you earn, the inland revenue will eventually get all of it. It is damn near impossible to buy anything that does not have a tax on it somewhere. Allow me to advance this argument. Say I have one hundred pounds. I go into an off-licence and buy ten bottles of whisky at ten pounds a bottle. The actual whisky only costs two pounds a bottle, all the rest is tax. So the man in the off-licence now has the difference, twenty pounds. He uses that to fill his car up with petrol. Tax on petrol represents seventy-five per cent of its market price. So now there’s only five pounds left out of my one hundred pounds. The chap at the petrol station spends this on five packets of cigarettes. And we all know how much tax there is on fags. Out of my original one hundred pounds, the government now have all but one. And whatever the man in the fag shop spends that one pound on will have a tax on it somewhere.’

‘Yes yes yes,’ said old silly-bollocks. ‘We all know this, although we wouldn’t want the man in the street to know it.’

‘Precisely,’ said the Doveston. ‘And we’re not going to tell him. Now this same man in the street is taxed roughly one-third of his weekly earnings in direct taxation. What would happen if he wasn’t?’

‘He’d have a third more of his money to spend every week,’ said old silly-bollocks.

‘And what would he spend it on?’

‘Things, I suppose.’

‘Precisely. Things with tax on.’

‘Er, excuse me,’ said what’s-his-face, the Foreign Secretary. ‘But if everybody in the country had a third more of their money in their pockets to spend and they did spend it, surely the shops would run out of things to sell?’

‘Precisely. And so factories would have to manufacture more things and to do so they would have to take on more staff and so you would cut unemployment at a stroke. And you wouldn’t have to increase anybody’s wages, because they’d all be getting a third more in their pay packets anyway. You’d have full employment and a happy workforce. Hardly the recipe for revolution, is it?’

‘There has to be a flaw in this logic,’ I said to Norman.

‘There has to be a flaw in this logic,’ said old silly-bollocks. ‘But for the life of me, I can’t see what it is.’

‘There is no flaw,’ said the Doveston. ‘And if you increase the purchase tax on all goods by a penny in the pound — which no one will complain about, because they’ll have so much more money to spend — you’ll be able to grab that final pound out of my original one hundred. You’ll get the lot.’

All around the boardroom table chaps were rising to applaud. Even the woman with the bald head, who usually wears the wig, got up and clapped.

‘Bravo,’ cheered Norman.

‘Sit down, you stupid sod,’ I told him.

‘Yeah, but he’s clever. You have to admit.’

‘He said he had a couple of radical proposals. What do you think the second one might be?’

‘Now, my second radical proposal is this,’ said the Doveston, once all the clappers had sat themselves down. ‘I propose that the government legalize all drugs.’