JURASSIC MARC!
T-Rex set to walk the earth
SCIENTISTS at the University of Glamorgan have sparked excitement among glam-rock fans after announcing ambitious plans to clone late pop icon
Marc Bolan, who has been extinct since 1977. Boffins say they have extracted intact DNA from a pair of the singer’s flared loon pants found on an internet auction site. This genetic material will be introduced into a chicken egg, which they hope will hatch into the first living Marc Bolan to be seen on the planet for more than forty years. “It’s a really thrilling project for everyone here at Glamorgan,” said Professor Tibor Szackacs, head of the Welsh University’s Life Sciences department. “Most people only know T-Rex from the television or pictures in books, so they don’t realise quite how big they were back in the seventies. If our experiment is successful, everyone will have the chance to actually see them in the flesh, and that’s very exciting.”
heyday
But Professor Szackacs’s plans have met with widespread criticism. Many T-Rex fans were unimpressed at the prospect of their cloned heartthrob taking the stage four decades after his heyday. “For a start, Marc is going to be half chicken,” said Barbara Drabness, life treasurer of the Glamorgan T-Rex fan club. “Chances are he won’t look anything like he did on the posters I used to have on my bedroom wall.”
“And secondly, it’s not really the proper T-Rex if they don’t also clone Mickey Finn or Steve Peregrin Took to play the bongos while Marc’s warbling away about swans and wizards and stuff,” she added.
According to Szackacs, the team has so far been unable to obtain any genetic material from Finn, who died from liver disease in 2003, or Took, who choked on a cocktail cherry in 1980. He told us: “If any groupies who had it off with them in the past happen to have saved their knickers as a souvenir, we’ll happily scrape some off, stick it in an egg and see what hatches.”
strawnight
Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby claimed that it would be interfering with God’s plan to clone the corkscrewed-haired pop minstrel. “The Lord clearly wanted Bolan to die, otherwise he wouldn’t have made his car crash into that tree,” he told Radio 4’s Eddie Mair. “It is simply not for scientists to meddle in the wondrous ways of His creation.”
And Dr Welby had this warning for Professor Szackacs and his team. “You bring Marc Bolan back to life if you want to, but don’t come crying to me when you all get cast into the lake of fire for ever and ever. Amen,” he said.