Tom Burnett

P REVIOUSLY in this column I have talked about how a Leek version of board game Monopoly would look.

I’ve never received so many responses to a column - many people emailed me with their suggestions, a friend called me to discuss the idea of actually making one and someone contacted me saying they were going to put a similar idea forward for Biddulph.

Perhaps my favourite response was an email from a man whose daughter had made ‘Leekopoly’ as a Christmas gift a few years back.

It looked like good fun - but the Chance Cards were the highlight for me.

The Chance Cards include having to pay vehicle repairs for underestimating how steep Daisy

Bank is, property damage caused by rioting roundabout protesters and the Go to Jail Card being replaced with ‘Go to Biddulph’ (which I appreciate will prove controversial in some quarters).

If Leekopoly was ever made into a commercial product I’d buy it. It even has a better name than the version I’d thought of, which would have been Monupoly, with the Monument on the cover. I’ll get my coat...

However it got me thinking about what other classic board games would ‘benefit’ from having a Leek version.

Trivial Pursuit would be fairly easy. It would just be a case of writing enough questions about the town in different categories. It would function very much in the same way it does already.

Perhaps it could be made more thematic by changing the board around slightly to feature more Leek landmarks etc.

Scrabble would be even easier - you could just use a normal Scrabble set and set a house rule that all words have to be Leekthemed.

Not one I’d be playing myself - my fiancee has an undefeated record against me at Scrabble and I don’t need to make it more difficult for myself than it already is.

Cluedo is when it comes down to it quite a grim game, but there’s probably a way to make it more cheerful and localise it?

Risk, the world conquest game featuring plastic soldiers and endless backstabbing, must surely be competing with Monopoly in terms of the sheer number of versions of it that exist.

Over the years I have been given the normal edition, a Star Wars Edition and a Game of Thrones edition as presents.

If it is good enough for Westeros and a galaxy far far away then surely it is good enough for the Staffordshire Moorlands?

You could set it out by area of Leek or, if you felt ambitious, the entire Staffordshire Moorlands by council ward - with extra reinforcements for holding an entire town (like you get for holding Europen).

Have you got any ideas? Let us know.