Source: bigstock

And while I’m at it, if you have trouble sleeping, don’t, I repeat don’t, buy any sleeping pills. Get The New York Times (international) instead. I have never in my long life seen a worse paper. Five full pages about a male American soldier who turned traitor, got thirty years, then became a woman and got pardoned. If this is interesting journalism, I am Mark Twain and Papa Hemingway rolled into one. The rag also got one in against the Brits, with a front-page story, “Did Politics of Race Fuel Tower Fire?” Yeah, right, it was “a clear class element” that burned all those people alive.

What I don’t understand is who would buy such a rag in a country like Britain where there are so many lively newspapers that don’t invent news to suit their politics? Let’s make sure it sells not a single copy, perhaps then it will return to the place it came from. Otherwise, things are really hunky-dory. This week will be a big one in London, and a grand ball in the country beckons on the weekend. Next week is The Spectator’s party, where I hope to become engaged to Olga, a Stakhanovite star of Russia Today. If she says yes, a little bird has told me that Vladimir Putin himself will be our best man. I know, I am putting the cart before the horse, as they say back on the farm I don’t come from, but what the hell, a man can dream, can’t he?

Finally, Professor Stephen Hawking says we must start evacuating Earth within decades. The professor must be taking the kind of stuff I took that sent me away to the big house 35 years ago. Why does he say this to us? He should tell it to our African cousins, who are multiplying quicker than The New York Times spreads lies. If only we could get the human smugglers who are torturing these people to try Mars rather than Europe.