WHAT HAPPENED NEXT SIR NICK CLEGG

November 2018

A month into his Facebook contract, Sir Nick Clegg finally remembers his password (Cleggbounce2010!) and is able to start work. The following week is difficult: he’s bullied for pronouncing ‘meme’ as a French ‘même’ in a town-hall meeting, and pranked into believing he should literally write on walls and poke employees to get their attention. ‘Nick, Nick, stop, they’re yanking your chain,’ Mark Zuckerberg says, catching Clegg scrawling ‘Happy Birthday mate x’ on an office door. Clegg is forlorn. ‘This is like when Michael Gove tricked me into thinking the cabinet meets in that tiny cupboard. That was a long night.’

April 2019

At the end of the year’s first quarter, Clegg is called into Zuckerberg’s office for an awkward appraisal. ‘It’s not that you’re slacking,’ he says, shifting on his beanbag, ‘I’m just concerned you haven’t understood your role.’ Zuck runs through Clegg’s activities so far, which include attempting to set up already-married members of staff, finding day rates for local hotel rooms, and inviting Bill Clinton to give a lunchtime talk on The Risk of Getting Caught is Actually Half the Turn-on. Clegg’s perplexed. ‘I thought I was Head of Global Affairs?’

January 2020

Logged on and doing the right job, Clegg is such a success that other social media companies get jealous. Twitter hires David Cameron and Snapchat takes on Gordon Brown – who admits he thought it was a forum to discuss hastily called elections. Clegg enjoys the tussle, before a Twitter-facebook merger lands him in coalition with Cameron again. Forced to give up his only corporate promises, Clegg ends up ignored at Twitbook. Eventually he can only watch, powerless, as Cameron caves to Luddite pressures and rashly agrees to a user referendum on leaving the internet. —