Mark Andrews: Work-from-home border czar, villains for hire, and who is the real-life Cliff Barnes?
Mark Andrews takes a wry look at the week that was
How did you mark the big day then? For me, it was all about getting the ambience right. The lighting was dimmed, a bit of Barry White on the CD player, settling down with a nice bottle of red to watch footage of handcuffed migrants being frogmarched up the steps to a plane, while Home Office officials raided a dodgy car wash.
I'm talking, of course about the Government's new Let's Be Tough on Immigration Day, held for the first time on Monday. I don't know about you, but I found it a bit of a let down. There was no real narrative to the video, no suspense where the plans went awry, and we never got to see the human side of the officials wielding the handcuffs. All you really saw was people walking about in handcuffs.
It wasn't a patch on Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away. They'll have to come up with some more engaging storylines if they want to make Let's Be Tough on Immigration Day an annual event.
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And if that doesn't convince you that the Government means business on immigration, wait until you hear about its incoming border czar, John Tuckett, who is so scary he can turn the people-trafficking gangs to jelly with just an icy stare across a video conferencing app.
Which is just as well, really, as he lives in Finland, and plans to carry out his duties from Scandinavia. Doesn't it defy belief that to stop millions of people illegally entering the country, they actually managed to find somebody who doesn't want to live here?
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Watching the way Donald Trump has spent his first weeks in office leaving half the world quaking in its boots, I can't help but think of J R Ewing, the protagonist in the American soap opera Dallas.
To the unfamiliar, J R was a ruthless tycoon and serial philanderer, who appeared to be totally consumed by a vendetta against his nemesis Cliff Barnes, a hapless public-sector lawyer who started dabbling in politics, but always showed himself to be out of his depth. If only I could think of someone he reminded me of.
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Over in Malaysia, 28-year-old Shazali Sulaiman has come up with an interesting way of making his customers look chivalrous on Valentine's Day, or any other day of the year for that matter.
Now when most people get told their dodgy leather clothing and unkempt hair makes them look like a wrong 'un, they either smarten themselves up, or land a spot presenting Top Gear. But Shazali has tried a different tack. Essentially, if your missus thinks you look a bit of a wuss, you can hire Shazali to set about her, and then back off when you spring to her defence.
"It is all just an act, like WWE," he says. "No one gets hurt, I am the only 'loser'."
Can't see it catching on over there though.
For a start, no-one would hail you a hero, and you would probably be arrested for 'taking the law into your own hands'.
And Shazali would probably be declared the victim of a hate crime, with The Guardian running a series of harrowing tales about how other greasy-haired muggers have to live with discrimination on a daily basis. Before you knew it, the European Court of Human Rights would be involved, and the Government would be calling a public inquiry.
