‘Oh well,’ said Norman. ‘One out of two wasn’t bad. Not for a bloke who’s Richard, anyway.’

Chaos reigned in the boardroom. The Doveston bashed his fists upon the table. Chaos waned and calm returned. The Doveston continued. ‘Please hear me out,’ he said. ‘Now, as we all know, the government spends a fortune each year in the war against drugs. It is a war that the government can never win. You can’t stop people enjoying themselves and there are just too many ways of bringing drugs into this country. So why does the government get so up in arms about drugs?’

‘Because they’re bad for you,’ said what’s-his-face.

‘You are amongst friends here,’ said the Doveston. ‘You can tell the truth.’

‘I’ll bet he can’t,’ said old silly-bollocks.

‘Can too.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Can too.’

‘Go on then,’ said the Doveston. ‘Why does the government get so up in arms about drugs?’

‘Because we can’t tax them, of course.’

‘Precisely. But you could tax them if they were legal.’

‘Don’t think we haven’t thought about it,’ said old silly-bollocks. ‘But no government dare legalize drugs. Even though half the population regularly use them, the other half would vote us out of office.’

‘But what if they were legalized, but the man in the street didn’t know they were legalized?’

‘I don’t quite see how you could do that.’

‘What if you were to take all the money that is wasted each year in the war on drugs, go over to the areas where the drugs are originally grown, the Golden Triangle and so on, and use the money to buy all the crops. Ship them back to England, then market them through the existing network of pushers. You wouldn’t half make a big profit.’

‘That’s hardly the same as legalizing them, or taxing them.’

‘Well, firstly, the people who take drugs don’t really want them legalized. Half the fun of taking drugs is the “forbidden fruit” aspect. They’re much more exciting to take if they’re illegal. Only the government will know that they’re legal, which is to say that the Royal Navy will import them. You can’t imagine any drug-traffickers wanting to take on the Royal Navy, can you? On arrival here, the drugs will be tested and graded, they could even be trademarked. They will be top quality, at affordable and competitive prices. Any opposition in the shape of rival drug-importers will soon be put out of business. The profits you make can be called “tax”. I can’t think of a better word, can you?’

‘But if the rest of the world found out...?’ Old silly-bollocks wrung his hands.

‘You mean if other governments found out? Well, tell them. Tell them all. Get them to do the same. It will put the Mafia out of business and increase government revenues by billions all over the world.’

‘But the whole world will get stoned out of its brains.’

‘No it won’t. No more people will be taking drugs than there are now. And fewer people in this country will be taking them.’

‘How do you work that out?’ old silly-bollocks asked.

‘Because a great deal of drug-taking is done out of desperation. By poor unemployed people who have given up hope. In the new income-tax-free society, they’ll all have jobs and money to spend. They won’t be so desperate then, will they?’

‘The man’s a genius,’ said Norman.

‘The man is a master criminal,’ I said. ‘No wonder he’s so into security. He’s probably expecting the arrival of James Bond at any minute.’

So, what of the Doveston’s radical proposals? What of them indeed. You will of course know that direct taxation ceased at midnight on the final day of the twentieth century, when most of the government’s computer systems self-destructed. But you probably didn’t know that since the summer of 1985 virtually any ‘illegal’ drug that you might have taken in this country was imported, graded and marketed with the approval of HM Government herself.

And that a penny in the pound on all profit made has gone directly to the man who brokered the original deal with the chaps from the Colombian drugs cartel.

And this many s name?

Well, I don’t really have to spell it out.

Do I?

But I’ll tell you what. It’s not Richard.

I worked for a full ten years at Castle Doveston.

Ten bloody years it took me doing it up. And when I had finally finished my labours, the Doveston drew my attention to some of the first rooms I’d decorated and remarked that they were now looking somewhat shabby and would I mind just giving them another lick of paint.

I did mind and I told him so. I had my conservatory to get started on and I felt I could use a holiday.

Mind you, I’m not saying that my years at Castle Doveston weren’t fun. In fact I’m prepared to say that they were some of the happiest years of my life. During those years I must have taken every conceivable drug and indulged in every conceivable form of sexual deviation known to man and beast. There was even some talk of naming a brand of iodine after me.

And I did get to meet the rich and famous. I got to watch them engaging in the bad behaviour that their status afforded them. And if I wasn’t there to witness it in person, I could always watch it on video the following day.

My video library became a bit of a legend in Brentford and I derived a great deal of pleasure from standing in the saloon bar of the Flying Swan, listening to conversations about the rumoured sexual peccadillos of film stars, before chipping in that I had them captured on tape doing worse. I never charged for private screenings, although I made a fair bit of money from marketing bootleg copies.

I should never have sent that compilation tape off to You’ve Been Framed though.

The vice squad did me for Possession of Pornographic material. Another two Ps there, you notice. But the case never came to court. The Doveston’s influence saw to that. His video library was far bigger than mine, with its own special magistrates’ section. And anyway, he was by now so hand in glove with the government that all his employees carried diplomatic immunity. Which meant that we could behave very badly and park on double yellow lines.

It was during this period, of course, that the Doveston became world famous. He had been rich and powerful for years, but he really got off on the fame.

It was the snuff that did it. The Doveston designer snuff

The Nineties, you see, were no laughing matter. These were the years of PC. Political Correctness. For which you can read TYRANNY. People were urged into giving things up. They gave up having casual sex. They gave up eating meat.

They gave up smoking!

They didn’t want to, but they did. The Secret Govermnent of the World decreed it and it was so. And where people had to be urged that little bit harder, they were. We all know now that AIDS and BSE were not the products of nature. They were engineered. But when it came to smoking, the approach was far more subtle.

The scare stories that smoking was actually bad for your health were never going to work. No-one in his or her right mind would ever believe such nonsense. So the Secret Government saw to it that smoking was banned in public places. You could no longer smoke in certain restaurants, in cinemas, in art galleries, in theatres and shops and schools and swiniming pools. Smoking was forbidden.

BUT NOT SO THE TAKING OF SNUFF.

It was almost as if he had seen it coming. Almost as if— perhaps —he’d had a hand in it. He had extensive tobacco plantations by now, in several Third World countries, along with his estates in Virginia. And was it really a coincidence that at a time when he was opening up trade with China, a vast and lucrative market which would surely swallow up everything he could produce, that smoking was suddenly being actively discouraged in the West?