Sense of humour failure

A really nice interview with Benjamin Zephaniah today in The Independent’s “You ask the questions” feature. Asked by one reader how he would disarm Saddam, he replies: “First, I wouldn’t have armed him in the first place. Britain went out of its way to sell arms to Saddam Hussein. I think we should be offering him a refund.” He also tells a bittersweet story about his only meeting with Tony Blair at some Foreign Office function a few years ago. Zephaniah gave a performance, and then Robin Cook gave an address. The two sat together afterwards and shared a joke ‘about how we [i.e. Cook and Zephaniah] worked really well as a team and should become a double act. So he introduced me to Tony Blair and said that we were going to go on tour together. Blair didn’t see the joke at all. He said something like, “You will do no such thing and you will report to my office tomorrow.”‘ In light of current events, it says it all, really.