Ed Griffiths

A CHRISTMAS CAROL By Charles Dickens Abridged by Henry Morris CHAPTER ONE – BORIS JOHNSON’S GHOST Old Boris Johnson was as dead as a doornail. The wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Johnson was tossing off a column for the Daily Mail. Sorry, I mean dead as a doornail. Boris Johnson and Rishi ‘Scrooge’ Sunak were business partners for I don’t know how many years. But when Johnson died in a JCB accident at the new Teesside Freeport because he’d forgotten his high-viz, Scrooge was not so saddened by the sad event, that on the very day of the funeral, he solemnised it by seizing control of the government Liz Truss had been euthanising. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, vain, and meticulously media-managed Scrooge. The cold within, and his exfoliating facemask, froze his features, nipped his nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and speak out gratingly in a charisma-free voice. It was cold and bleak. Suddenly, a cheerful person entered the office. It was Matt Hancock. “A merry Christmas, Rishi! God save you!” Matt said. “Bah! Humbug!” said Scrooge. “My focus group told me to say that.” “You don’t mean that, Rishi!” said Matt. “Christmas is beaut!” “What reason have you to be merry Matt? You're an imbecile.'' “Well, I’ve just been on SAS: Are You Tough Enough?, which was suuuu-perb, the landlord of my local gives me free J20s, and I’ve got a girlfriend who snogs me.” “If I could work my will,'' said Rishi, “everyone who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be buried with his own divorce-Subaru with a stake of holly through his heart. Now try and look statesmanlike Rishi.” Matt looked at him blankly. “Oh, sorry, I’m reading off the notes from my focus group, I wasn’t supposed to say that last bit.” “We’re having a party, would you like to come?” After reading his PR brief, Rishi said he could think of nothing worse than the calibre of Lynx Africa-scented guests, and the drivel that might escape their mouths, at a Matt Hancock Christmas party. When he left, Mick Lynch came in. “Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts. We need to pay them more, sir” he said. “Are there no prisons?” “Not really, they’re all full and broken after Chris Grayling.” “Are there no workhouses?” “If you mean places people work for less money than their bills, then yes, loads.” “You impertinent cockney Marxist.” said Scrooge. “You should retrain as a pearly king and leave my billionaire wife and I to our opaque tax affairs.” But as he sat down before the fire he heard a clanking noise, followed by a ghost coming right through the heavy door. It was Boris Johnson! The spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chain with a dismal and appalling noise, like Matt Hancock asking for redemption through a mouthful of wombat bollock. “Dreadful ghost, why do you trouble me?'' It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground. “At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Mainly from hangovers. I wear these chains because I betrayed a nation that was diligently following the brutal rules.” “B b b ut you were a man of business, Boris” faltered Scrooge. “Business!'' cried the Ghost. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. And I tossed it all off playing pissed Twister and doing lines of gear off Hansards in the Cabinet Room. I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. You will be haunted, by Three Spirits.” “Can you promise me none of them will be Liz Truss?” “No, I cannot.” Scrooge wailed. “Without their visits, you cannot hope to escape the path I tread” replied the ghost. “What about, in a bid to humanise myself, if I just go to a Sainsburys, fill up somebody else’s Kia Rio and fail to use a contactless card to pay for it?” asked Rishi. “No. Shut up. Expect the first ghost when the bell tolls one.”