If you get to Westminster, which of your fellow MPs would you want on a pub quiz team?
Tricky. Pub quiz teams require an all-round knowledge of the outside world, so putting a team of MPs together won’t be easy. Obviously different MPs would bring different things to the table – David Cameron might be handy on Carlton TV sitcoms of the 90s but that’s never going to come up; no one remembers The Upper Hand. George Osborne’s fantastical imagination – the lad’s a dreamer, you have to admire that in someone – wouldn’t be any use to a pub quiz team. Also it’s a shame David “Two Brains” Willetts is leaving the Commons as, by the sounds of him, he’d be handy. So I’d be working with what’s in front of me, in which case – Michael Gove, because he seems to think he’s right about everything; Tristram Hunt for history (though him and Gove would have to behave); Danny Alexander, because he won’t be out of his depth for a change; and if he gets elected, Boris Johnson as a ringer for any questions about Latin.
Who do you think would win in a three-way lager-off – you, William Hague or Nigel Farage?
These men are amateurs. The drinking itself wouldn’t be a challenge – in fact, I’d say there isn’t a table in the land I couldn’t drink them under. No, it’s the company that would be an issue. You’d have Farage pretending he’s not a public-school stockbroker and actually some sort of man of the people – and what sort of muppet pretends to be someone they’re not, eh? I ask you. And then Hague droning on and on about the time he met Angelina Jolie. No thanks.
Would the Pub Landlord give spies greater access to the public’s social media?
I knew you were about to ask me that – I watched you draft it in the email account on the secondhand hard-drive I bought off Irish Geoff last year in the snug bar. If MI5 feel the need to go on Twitter, they’ll find out pretty quickly what a handy magnet it is for cretins.
But this is a serious issue – do we hand over our precious freedoms, even the precious freedoms we never knew we had, such as anonymously calling a celebrity horrible things unimaginatively, in order to stop the very people who would, if they got half the chance, take those very freedoms away? It’s a riddle inside a conundrum, wrapped in a puzzle behind a firewall. Personally, I think it would be good for the country if we turned off the internet at 5pm on Friday and only turned it back on on Monday morning. There would be no more drunk tweeting, no more vengeful emails to the ex, impulse purchases on Amazon (or whatever right-on site you lot use at the Guardian), no more having to use In Private Browsing or whatever it’s called as you cry lonely tears in your bedsit, Ian.
If that makes me a totalitarian, so be it. What the public forget is that the enemies of freedom – or as I prefer to call them, the Evil Enemy Jihadist Toerags, EEJiTs for short – want to destroy our way of life. And only a fool would give in to an EEJiT. So leave it to me and FUKP to get it right.
Would you ever swap your sixth-form chic for normcore or nu lad?
I wish I knew what you were talking about, princess. Is it trousers? I like trousers. If it’s trousers, yes.
Ukip’s sole education policy is to ensure a grammar school in every town. What do FUKP have planned?
Well, famously, Tony Blair said “education, education, education”. We in FUKP say “education, education, education, education, education, education, education, education, education, education, education”, which is eight more educations than he ever said. As for this grammar-schools plan: why does Ukip want only grammar taught in schools? That’s a backwards step. What of spelling? Maths? Science? Yet another unrealistic policy from an out-of-touch party. Thanks a lot, Nige.
From Ronald Reagan with Born In The USA to David Cameron with the xx, politicians traditionally get into trouble for trying to co-opt pop songs for their campaign. What’s your campaign theme song? And have you asked their permission?
FUKP policy is for Queen to play the national anthem at all state occasions; Brian May is going to spend most of the rest of his days in a harness with his guitar, being swung through a wall of dry ice over the heads of royalty and foreign dignitaries. It’s what the public want. But we don’t have a campaign song yet as it happens. If we did it would be some band people have heard of though, Alexis, not the Cheeky Mice, or Blind Towers, or Mapping Biscuits, or Ka-PLA! or the Small Family or We Are Project or any of that current crap you have to pretend to like. I don’t know how you do it, mate.
Will you support further cuts of £12bn to the welfare bill, promised by George Osborne if he wins the election?
I don’t think he’s gone far enough – he needs to send out a much clearer message. George should change the name of benefits to Scrounge Credits. And that’s the problem with these Tories, they’re out of touch with the real world. When has Osborne had to work for cash because he’s claiming for a bad back? Never. It’s obvious though that the next chancellor is going to need to borrow more to get us out of debt.
How would you tackle the fact that boozers are being closed every week around the country to make more room for doughnut-kimchi-cereal shops with three-hour queues full of beards and bicycles?
It fills my heart with further sadness. At some point though the doughnut-kimchi-cereal-beardy-bike shop bubble will burst, and the only people crying will be the bankers daft enough to lend hipsters money; the hipsters will of course shave off their beards, change their names and disappear. We’ve all done it. But pubs are like the buttons on the fabric of the nation’s flies: without them the country will come undone. So what my guvnorment would do is nationalise the British pub. All publicans would become civil servants, jobs for life and pensions, and drinking in a pub – every pint purchased – would be logged on a central national computer to show how much effort you have put into doing your bit. Common sense.
Is it right that Polish immigrants can win our British Turner prize?
If they’re quicker, cheaper and clean up after themselves, what’s not to like? Ours are a scruffy lot. The Polish Tracy Emin’s bed has lovely hospital corners. And you were out of order about them poppies, pal.
Salt-of-the-earth Nigel has teamed up with openly racist and bigoted far-right politicians in Europe. Were you to win, do you have any imaginative alliances in mind?
I’m glad you asked me that. Nigel has certainly met with exactly the sort of unsavoury people that might make you want to leave Europe for ever: maybe that explains his attitude. But needs must when the devil drives – when times are tight you have to bend with the wind, compromise, like the time we tried hummus and dips in the lounge bar. The important thing is to draw a line somewhere, though, there’d always be T’s and C’s: I’d even be able to accommodate Vladimir Putin but he’d have to cover himself up first. It’s not pleasant, is it?
Will you celebrate your inevitable victory by making it illegal to call a filled casserole dish with a mere pastry lid a “pie”, given that the term should only be used to describe a filling fully enclosed in pastry. In short, will you have the courage to defend the Great British Pie?
Finally, a question that tackles the actual issues facing us right now, that affects ordinary people’s lives. That’s what I like about you, Rayner. Lids do not a pie make. I expect this is something to do with Brussels, and even if it isn’t, I shall decry it thusly. What I like about this though is that unlike, say, the Dangerous Dogs Act, this is a law we can easily define, enact and act upon. Some may well protest. I don’t doubt the letters page of the Guardian will be full of historians and pie scientists and diversity planners protesting, but enough is enough.
Who should bear the burden of fixing the deficit? What, or who, would you tax and what would you cut?
First things first, I’d plant some money trees up north, like the SNP had planned. Of course, the trouble with that is we would have to wait until autumn for the money harvest, so in the meantime we’d have to find some money somewhere. We’ve talked about this long and hard at FUKP – it caused one of our latest lock-ins ever. What it boils down to is the pound in your pocket has been losing value since the war (which we won, no help from no one else). You may ask why? Well, it’s obvious. On the pound is a picture of the Queen, and as respect for the royal family has dimmed, so the value of the pound has been similarly affected. Logic. Common sense. Every time Prince Andrew is in the papers, the pound loses out a little bit more. The answer? More royal pageants, treason trials, that sort of thing. That might not be the answer you were looking for Heather, but it has as much chance of working as anything else.
Are there too many foreign lagers?
All lagers served in British pubs come from countries conquered and/or defeated by the UK in war so therefore are spoils of war and not foreign, like the royal family.
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