What with the recession, the Millennium and that, I've been thinking of branching out into other careers, preferably those of other people.
Two fields that attract me are politics and Evil, so it makes sense that I should consider spin-doctoring.
Being a Welsh, the sole choice for me is to offer my services to Plaid Cymru, which nowadays helpfully subtitles itself The Party of Wales.
There's a Westminster election only a matter of months away, and Plaid needs to raise its media game if it's to consign Labour to the working men's club of history.
And so here's my shooting script for a short party political broadcast on behalf of Plaid. If anyone from Tŷ Gwynfor is reading, feel free to use it. In return I ask only to be made head of ADEC (Adran Diogelwch Cenedlaethol - Department of National Security) come the glorious day.
SCENE: A drizzly valley town, dragons foraging on the slag heaps and facing down feral sheep over moody, male-voice hymnal music. Camera pans along a black and white terraced street to a doorway where a TANGNEFEDDWR ["peacemaker" - cruel but fair Welsh policeman of the Nationalist Future] is clubbing a Labour canvasser who looks vaguely Kinnockian.
KINNOCKITE: [under truncheon crunches] Urgh, arghl, bloody kebabbed mun, totally and utterly...
TANGNEFEDDWR: 'ckin' Sachsengruss, innit!
SCENE: Camera fades into sepia and pans in through window of house opposite as hymn music lightens a little. A pious Welsh family of Father, Mam, teenage son and eight-year-old daughter are settling down to an evening meal of oven-ready chips at an oilcloth dinner table.
Portraits of Saunders Lewis, Cayo Evans and Shaky adorn the dingy walls.
FATHER: Before we eats, let us never forget or forgive the Battle of Morfa Rhuddlan, the Treason of the Blue Books, Hedd Wyn, Wales not qualifying for the World Cup in 1974, and Windsor Davies.
MAM: Ap-men!
Family tucks into chips, content in their Cambritude.
Then the little girl looks through the window to the scene of the Tangnefeddwr wearily clubbing the yappy Labour lackey.
Slowly, she gets up from the table and heads for the front door.
Family stops eating aghast, and music halts abruptly. Father moves to intercept the girl, but Mam holds him back. They watch petrified as their daughter steps out onto the slick pavement, and crosses the street towards the scene of the walloping.
She extends the slate of chips towards the two men.
The Tangnefeddwr turns, his truncheon raised ready to rain down bludgeoning blows, his face a scree of stubble under a Pinochet ski-slope peaked cap.
The little girl looks him in the eye, and offers him a chip.
The Tangnefeddwr, tears mingling with the sleet in his slate-grey eyes, takes the tiny chip in his great, gauntleted hand, and nibbles it with the delicacy of a Hawarden vicar's wife.
He strokes the little girl's damp hair in thanks, then notices the muttering colonial heap bolshily bleeding on his boots below.
A gradual grin cracks the craggy terrain of his endlessly Welsh face, and he hands the little girl his truncheon.
With a coy smile, she sets about the Kinnockite's sweetbreads under the sheltering gaze of the chip-munching Tangnefeddwr.
VOICEOVER: [Philip Madoc, ideally] Gymry, dewch i rhannu (Welshies, come and share)!
Calon by Injaroc (or Diffiniad, if you must), plays out over fade to Plaid Cymru logo.
END
