All hail the Happiness Tsar

There are many things that keep me awake at night. Fore­most amongst these, obvi­ously, are the warped thoughts and ima­gin­ings of my own dis­eased mind. Then there is the con­cerned voice of my social con­science, fret­ting about the future of the human race and whether the planet is doomed to dis­ap­pear forever in a cough­ing cloud of our own car­bon monox­ide pois­on­ing. More recently, thanks to my newly acquired impair­ment, there has also been the thorny issue of whether I’ve acci­dent­ally left the gas hob on and if I can really be bothered to get out of bed to check when it means put­ting my bloody pros­thetic leg on again.

How­ever, since his rise to infamy and pos­i­tion of immense national import­ance, there is one par­tic­u­lar shad­owy fig­ure that has fre­quently kept me from bliss­ful slum­ber. His name is Dr John Reid MP and, God help us, he is the Home Sec­ret­ary — the fourth most power­ful per­son in the United King­dom after the Prime Min­is­ter, the Chan­cel­lor of the Exchequer and Gra­ham “Oh go on then, give me another prime­time series because I’m really not on TV enough” Norton.

But why, I can hear you ask­ing, does John Reid keep me awake and in such a state of almost cata­tonic ter­ror? Well, have you looked at him lately? Have you heard him speak? Have you pic­tured him, as I all too fre­quently have, loiter­ing down a dark alley? Have you felt the clammy sen­sa­tion of cold sweat on your brow as you ima­gine him slip­ping on a pair of black leather gloves, pick­ing up a knuckle-duster or a mon­key wrench from his tool­box of pun­ish­ment equip­ment, and then lying in wait for the next rep­rob­ate or hoodie who dares to tres­pass on his manor? Have you thought about what it would be like to be a for­eign vis­itor to this appar­ently blessed and sceptred isle who has inad­vert­ently out­stayed the dur­a­tion of their visa, only to be woken in the dead of night by a text mes­sage on your mobile phone, no doubt sent per­son­ally by the fear­some man him­self from his steel-clad bunker in Air­drie and Shotts, warn­ing you in no uncer­tain terms that you should get the hell out before his lads come round and break your legs? No? Oh, it’s just me then.

The good news for my tired eyes and frayed nerves is that hav­ing prob­ably deemed him­self unable to carry out some of the fun­da­mental tasks required of a Home Sec­ret­ary — such as keep­ing a lid on the prison pop­u­la­tion, deport­ing for­eign inmates rather than simply releas­ing them back into bliss­ful free­dom, and mak­ing sure that the Home Office doesn’t just implode in utter chaos — John Reid has decided to resign from the Cab­inet and return to the back benches. Let joy be uncon­fined. From his pos­i­tion of far less respons­ib­il­ity he will be able to carry on serving his con­stitu­ency, spend more time with his fam­ily, and prob­ably indulge in some of his favour­ite (alleged) pas­times, such as ter­ri­fy­ing small chil­dren and kick­ing over pen­sion­ers whilst they stand queuing at bus stops.

How­ever, should Dr Reid find him­self at a loose end, I have a sug­ges­tion for him. In the course of doing some inter­net research, I recently dis­covered that the Gov­ern­ment has a so-called ‘hap­pi­ness tsar’. Bril­liant. Just bril­liant. We actu­ally have a per­son spe­cific­ally in charge of ensur­ing that we’re happy. Who knew? In my humble and ill-informed opin­ion, I say that the Prime Min­is­ter should sack the anonym­ous and emin­ently for­get­table Labour peer who presently occu­pies this vital post, and put John Reid in his place. Could there be a more per­fect job for our former Home Sec­ret­ary than to be in charge of people’s hap­pi­ness? I think not. I can already ima­gine him turn­ing up at my front door accom­pan­ied by two heav­ies armed with base­ball bats, his square-jawed face wreathed in a smile that looks more like a Pit Bull ter­rier chew­ing a wasp, before he grabs me round the neck, twists me into a head-lock and men­acingly orders me to be happy … or else.

Oh dear. I think the night­mares might be trapped in my sub­con­scious for some time yet to come. Maybe I’ll try and pic­ture the calm­ing coun­ten­ance of a far less ter­ri­fy­ing fig­ure. Han­ni­bal Lecter. Joseph Stalin. Vlad the Impaler. Nor­man Tebbit. Gra­ham Norton.

Yes, I’m feel­ing bet­ter already. John who?