Good morning, Mr Respectable. Now please bend over

WE FLY at dawn. Yes, Italy, seeing as you’ve asked. Villa with a pool, on the coast south of Genoa.

Being a middle-aged, middle-class white man who couldn’t possibly be a terrorist threat, I’m anticipating the full monty at airport security so I’ll be wearing new underpants and hole-free socks. I’m also told that every thing of any value will be taken from me at the checkpoint, including make-up and my cigarette lighter, but that I can replenish all supplies from approved duty free shops. Hmm … how convenient.

Now obviously I don’t want to hurtle to earth in a ball of flames, but are we not overdoing the possible weapon thing? I ask because I went to a football match on Saturday and had my newspaper confiscated on the way in. The reason? It was apparently a potential weapon.

Now I don’t know about you, but if half a dozen hard core hooligans are coming at me across the terraces, I’d want something a bit more substantial than a damp copy of the Daily Star to defend myself with. But still, I can remember the Sixties when for a while you had to remove your boots before they’d let you into a football ground. That was really fun, particularly given the primitive toilet arrangements that encouraged a rather liberal attitude to public urination.

WRITING LAST week of Tom and Jerry frying pans and falling anvils inspired me to wonder about other cartoon clichés. I mean, when did you last see a dog running out of a butcher’s shop dragging a string of sausages? In fact, when did you last see a string of sausages, now that we’re all buying pre-packed supermarket crap?

Do desert islands really just have one palm tree and a bloke with a beard living on them? And are scantily-clad blondes washed up there on a regular basis? Do cats still get stuck up trees? (The answer is yes, and the fire brigade is banned by the Health and Safety Nazis from rescuing them. Oh, and they can’t slide down poles anymore in case they hurt themselves either.)

Have you ever seen anyone slip on a banana skin? Do women in rollers really lurk behind front doors clutching a rolling pin? Even in Hartlepool? Has anyone ever put a freshly-baked pie on a window sill to cool? And then had it stolen by a cat wearing a trilby? Or an unshaven man dressed up as John Prescott?

You know when you’re really, really hungry? Have you ever eaten a huge sandwich and then watched in the mirror as a sandwich-shaped lump slowly descended down your neck? And if you did swallow a lighted stick of dynamite, wouldn’t it go out when it arrived at your stomach?

Now I have to confess that I have actually stood on a rake, but there weren’t any swallows flying in circles around my head after I did it. Just a trip to casualty for seven stitches. And despite all the head injuries I’ve received down the years, I’ve never had a three-foot long perfectly formed bump spring from my forehead. I’ve also hit my thumb with a hammer, but of the red, throbbing, 20 x actual size bruise there was no sign. I’ve also run into a wall, without leaving a body-shaped hole.

I’ve never painted a black circle in the middle of the road, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t expect any passing cars to fall into it. And if I accidentally ran over the edge of the Grand Canyon, I would hold out no great hopes that simply keeping running in thin air would get me safely to the other side.

And tell me, why isn’t the ACME corporation as big as Walmart?

You know, there’s a film script in this somewhere. Anyone got Bob Hoskins’ phone number?

I TRUST you’ve all seen the tragic news about the clown who was crushed to death during a circus performance in County Clare, Ireland, the other night? He was killed when a cage, held aloft in the Big Top by a hot air balloon, fell on him from a great height.

Now that’s very sad. But I do wonder if it was simply karma catching up with him. Let’s face it - I bet he's spent years driving round in a patently unfit motor vehicle with the doors and wheels falling off and the engine exploding. Sooner or later, irresponsible behaviour like that is going to catch up with you.

And a final thought. How did they fit his shoes in the coffin?

NOT A week passes without another dose of confusing health advice. One day a cup of tea too many will kill you; the next you’re being encouraged to chew tea-bags to ward off cancer.

Now it’s the turn of cider. Yes, folks, a glass of cider a day apparently keeps the Grim Reaper away, although this research from Glasgow University hits an immediate stumbling block. I mean, how many 80-year-old Scottish tramps have you ever seen? They’ve usually popped their clogs (or their shoes stuffed with newspaper) long before their fifties.

And what if it turns out to be true? That will mean that all those feral children you see hanging around outside the off licence drinking White Lighting from two-litre plastic bottles will be a burden on the State for another 70 years. Pass the scrumpy, quick.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone who isn't trying to find the address of Cillit Bang's Barry Scott so they can hunt him down and kill him, of anyone who doesn't wish that if Ruth Archer and Sam the cow man are going to have an affair they'd just bloody well get on with it, or of anyone who is vaguely impressed with the ungrammatical claim of Smarties' advertising that "they're ain't not no artifical colourings in Smarties". Maybe not now, but what was in those blue ones, you bastards?