Get my trousers OFF – and don’t mention THE WAR!

TODAY’S column was a toss- up between two spoofs. Should I imagine an episode of The Sweeney, featuring Jack Regan wearing a menopause vest? Or Fawlty Towers being taken over by the Home Office to house Albanian migrants?

Mind How You Go versus You Couldn’t Make It Up. Or a combination of the two, in a bumper edition of Makes You Proud To Be British?

Then I thought, why not do both? So today we have a choice of programming. On Uk Gold, it’s Fawlty Towers. Over on ITV4, it’s The Sweeney.

MORNING, Major.

Morning, Fawlty. Papers here yet? Just the Tirana Times, Major. What, no Daily Mail?

No call for it, Major. None of our guests speak English. Apart from you, of course. They’re all Albanian. albanian?

That’s right.

What are they doing in Torquay?

Most of them landed on the beach at Paignton over the weekend.

Has there been an invasion?

I wouldn’t use that kind of language if I were you, Major. Walls have ears.

What kind of language? Invasion.

Sorry, old boy, don’t follow.

We mustn’t call it an invasion. Officially, these are all vulnerable women and young children fleeing war.

So they’re Ukranian?

No, Major, Albanian.

I didn’t know there was a war in albania.

There isn’t, Major. Just don’t mention it.

Don’t mention what?

The non-existent war in Albania. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

I see. So where are all the women and young children?

There aren’t any, Major. But we’re not allowed to mention that, either.

So all those men kicking a football around in the car park are albanian?

Precisely. ‘ Unaccompanied minors’ is, I believe, the correct expression.

But they all look about 25. Most of them have got beards.

Ours not to reason why, Major. How did they end up at Fawlty Towers?

All the other hotels in Britain are full. We’re the Last Chance Saloon. Home Office called on Friday to say we’re being requisitioned until further notice.

Can they do that?

Apparently so. I had no say in the matter. Sybil took the call and all she could see were pound signs. We’re getting £200 a night per head, which more than outweighs the money we’d have got from the holiday bookings, the wedding receptions and the annual Rotary Club lunch we’ve had to cancel. Where have they all come from? France.

I thought you said they were albanian.

They are, Major. Do keep up. But they’ve come here from France. By all accounts, the Home Office has done some deal with the French to stop them coming over from Calais to Dover. So the people smugglers have switched the route and they now come from Cherbourg to Devon.

How many of them?

For t y - odd thousand at last count.

So it is an invasion?

I’ve warned you already, Major. We’ll have the hate crime squad round unless you mind your language.

That’s what I thought.

What?

It’s like living in an episode of Mind your language. Can’t understand a dashed word they’re saying.

Now you know how I’ve felt for the past 40 years. The Germans were bad enough guests. And those awful Americans. But these Albanians take the ruddy biscuit. They complain about everything, especially the food. Terry rustled them up a special Waldorf salad last night, but they wouldn’t touch it. One even had the nerve to complain about the view from his room.

Really?

Yes, really. I said: ‘What do you expect to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? The White Cliffs of bleedin’ Dover?’ Vermin.

Steady on, Major. You can’t call them that. They’re asylum seekers, fleeing persecution.

Not the albanians, Fawlty. Manuel’s pet rat’s back. look, over there.

I thought he’d taken it with him.

With him where, Fawlty? Barcelona. He went home after Brexit. Can’t get staff for love nor money these days, not now everyone thinks they’re entitled to work from home and all the Europeans have buggered off. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea. What’s not?

Buggering off. Emigrating. There’s half a dozen dinghies been abandoned on the beach. I might just take my chances. Care to join me, Major? You’re going to have to vacate your room immediately, anyway, to make way for another busload of migrants. I hear Albania’s nice this time of year . . .

MEANWHILE, in the squad room at New Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Regan is slipping a bottle of Glennhoddle back into his bottom drawer. Enter Sergeant Carter . . .

AND where the hell have you been, George? You were supposed to be here three hours ago. I hope you haven’t been up to naughties again. You didn’t pull that barmaid and go back her place did you? She certainly had some lunch on her.

Sadly not, guv. Turned out she was cased up with that 300lb gorilla on the door, face like he’d been ten rounds with Our ’Enery. So where have you been? Stuck at the M4/M25 junction. We were doing 90 ’cos we had the word to go . . .

Not another gang of villains in a shed down at Heathrow?

No guv, not a shed — a bleedin’ hotel. you know, same one where Billy Murray played your stoppo driver. Full of albanian gangsters these days, newly arrived from Dunkirk. anyway, we never made it. Traffic backed up for miles. Didn’t Bill use the blues’n’twos? Made no difference. Some posh Herbert had glued himself to the gantry and the woodentops had closed the roads in all directions.

Where was the local Chief Inspector?

He’d nipped off to McDonald’s on his skateboard to get the geezer a Big Mac and a nice cup of tea.

Dunno what this job’s coming to, George. Open a window, will you?

Hold on, guv. It’s brass monkeys in here.

Just do as you’re told, Sergeant. If you say so, dear. What’s the matter — you going through the change?

That’s exactly what I AM doing, George.

I thought you looked a bit flustered.

Flustered? I feel like Chernobyl in full meltdown.

Whatcha got on? looks like a gillette wossname.

This, Sgt Carter, is a menopause vest, as modelled by our new head of anti-terrorism, Matt Jukes.

and I thought the last one was diddlo.

It’s designed to help men experience what women go through during the menopause. Don’t do it, guv. It’s not worth it. I haven’t got any choice, George. All senior male officers have been ordered to wear one.

They should have asked Frank Haskins. He’s been on the turn for donkey’s years.

Enough, George. Just pull that plug out. And while you’re at it, get my trousers off . . . I’m bleedin’ cooked!