Losertown: The Balkan Shot

Thank you! Hi! Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Balkan Shot! I'm Giles Boutros, your host for tonight, and keeping track of the scores for me is the lovely Madge Albright!

You're looking lovely tonight Madge. Is this stunning sparkly black number new?

[gameshow voice] Well, Giles, [beat] the Serbs have committed [increasing robot-like voice/effect] atrocities against humanity which cannot go unpunished by those in the international community [full-on Davros mode by now] who see a Serbia controlled by Milosevic as a threat to global security.

Can you just introduce the first contestant please?

[back to normal] Well, Giles, tonight's first contestant is a Mr. Tony Blair!

Hi Tony.

Hi.

Now, you understand the rules, you must answer the questions using the words yes and no.

...yes.

Ready?

...yes.

Now Tony, I understand you have a lovely wife back home.

[answering back straight away now] Yes.

And two kids, is that right?

Yes.

And you think the bombings over Serbia were an unmitigated success.

[beat] Yes.

<fake laugh> Well done Tony, I nearly caught you out there. You're doing well so far, aren't you Tony?

[thinking] ...yes.

Now Tony, do you think the presence of Russian troops in Kosovo may prove disruptive to the K-FOR effort?

Well, I think what you have to take into account...

Oh Tony. Tony, Tony, Tony, ohhh. You were doing so well. The yes/no game is very hard, isn't it?

[now in full flow] Well it's not a question of how well or how badly...

Oh stop it and get off my show. Madge, please introduce...

...made it through to the Balkan Shot SuperShot game final!

Okay Robin... into the iso-booth with you. Now you've got to direct Bobby the Bomb Sights over the map of Europe, and when you're ready to drop the bombs, shout fire! Do you understand?

Fire!! Fire, Giles, Fire!!

Whoah. Slow down. Into the iso-booth... you've got thirty seconds... starting... now!

Fire!! North! East! Fire! East, east! Fire!! Fire!! [beat] Fire!!! South! Fire! West!! Fire!! Fire!

Okay Robin. Your time is up. Let's see how you've done.

[coming out of the booth] Fire! Fire!!

Okay, that's enough. Now, Robin, you need two hundred points to win the dream holiday to East Timor. You've hit... two anti-aircraft devices, scoring one hundred points!

[still over-excited] Fire! Hee hee.

But Robin, you've also hit four schools, a hospital for disabled children who are politically opposed to Slobodan Milosevic, and a bread queue. ...In southern Italy.

But never mind Robin, you've still done better than NATO did in real life, so you win this lovely fridge-freezer and two nights in the sack with Chelsea Clint...

...us tonight is General Sir Patrick Bilious, commander of Britain's troops in NATO. Off you go then Pat.

Well, Jerry, as you can see...

Don't call me Jerry.

Oh, er, as you can see the bombings have caused Serbia to agree to peace. So we have been successful in our aims.

[pause] Oh. Is that it?

Yes.

Not very good, is it?

What?

[bored] You killed lots of people. You bombed lots of the wrong stuff. You bombed the wrong countries half the time.

Well, what you have to remember, Jerry is that a lot of their town names sound the same. So it's quite easy to go out meaning to destroy Divos in Serbia and end up bombing Dibrës in Albania, or Macedonia [beat] or Sweden. Easily done. It's a mistake any hyper-efficient multinational defensive alliance could've made. I mean these people don't even use normal damned letters Jerry. Where we use a large white 'H' on a blue background on our maps, they just have some funny symbols that you can't read, and looks a bit like a row of guns. [pause] So it wasn't our fault. [pause] ...Jerry?

Sorry, I wasn't listening to you. And don't call me Jerry you big pants. You going to be dropping more bombs on everyone that causes you any trouble from now on then? A few bombs for Iraq? A few more on the single mothers?

Well, I think there are plenty of lessons to be learnt from the action in Kossova, not least, er,

You're a dick. Mner mner mner, I'm a big general and I can't even say Kosovo properly.

Excuse...

Shut up you dick. Now a look at tomorrow's papers. The Independent leading with "Keegan rejects 'Lovely Bunch of Coconuts' claim"...