It was the same with Great Uncle Hello? Hello?, who was widely considered a dreadful pain until he surrendered entirely to lunacy and took to turning up at revivalist meetings with his pet bucket, and going bibble-bibble-bibble on his lip during readings from the Gospel, in the belief that he was Beezlebub. He never did get the name right, either, but it was his delusion, so fair enough

Of course, Hello? Hello? wasn’t his real name either. It was just that, in middle age, he seemed to acquire a terrible fear that whoever he was talking to would die during the conversation. “Well,” he’d say, “I was walking in the Orangery this morning when, bless my soul, who should appear but Mrs Lipschitz from the village, absolutely stark Hello? Hello? …”
It was obviously hereditary, because Grandpa got it too, in due course He was fine, face-to-face It was the telephone that bothered him The phone would ring You’d pick it up “Hello?” you’d say “Ah,” he’d say, “it’s Grandpa. Are you there?” We never pinned him down, but I suspect a fear of electricity coupled with mild delusions of grandeur, as though the sound of his voice, electronically transmitted, was a phenomenon of such potency as to obliterate the person on the other end.We waited for Grandpa to go over the edge, too, but he never did Just got older, but otherwise remained much the same It’s easier when they go bonkers.

Everything gets fined down to a single identifiable delusion, rather charming and forgivable That’s what has happened to the Government. Everything else has disappeared, now; all those things they used to believe in. Monetarism, lower-middle-class snobbism, the puritan work-ethic, the shopkeeper mentality, xenophobia, the mystical significance of double- entry book-keeping, sharp suits, mobile phones; contempt for the poor, the weak, the old and the sick; old ladies, bicycles, Holy Communion and morning mists; not to mention unreconstructed social Darwinism … all gone, subsumed into one, overweening, lunatic idea; money Not an idea about money Not a philosophy with money at its centre.

Not a political or economic system that has an interesting new approach to the question of money Just the word itself. If the apes that use sign language were allowed to drink alcohol, what better way to ask for a dry Martini? !. I DON’T know about you, but I’m beginning to get strangely fond of the Government, now that they’re over the hump. In the meantime, these apes continue to intrigue and delight us with their simian-human outlook on the world.The film Congo, which is based on a book by Michael Crichton, starred a gorilla called Amy. She used sign language for the deaf, and wore a virtual-reality glove with a speaker attached to it which translated her hand gestures into computerised American speech It’s certainly true that Amy is vocal “Me want green drop drink,” she once said.