PAGE 4::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::THE X-FILES

Call me big-headed, but I like to think of the X-Files as pushing back BLARB's frontiers, and to justify this claim, yesterday I branched into investigative journalism, a pastime where fat blokes put on green coats, say "Excuse me, are you [insert name of victim here]? I'm a journo and I've got a camera concealed in my bag, could I talk to you about...." and then get compound fractures to three ribs. After I'd bought a sad sports bag for my camera and put on the relevant amount of weight I set off in pursuit of a story. I didn't have far to look. I noticed that in my usual conversation I was adding an awful lot of overdramatic cliché s. I was determined to find out why, even if it meant killing myself. A lot of people who went to the same hospital as I did had the same problem. I went to sort him out. In the villain's surgery I sat down and started a conversation, waiting to pounce. I was aware that I had to work quickly as the problem was worsening; that last sentence had two cliché s in.

" Excuse me, are you Bob Hunt? I think there's something you should tell me, you low-down scummy cockchafer beetle. "

"Ja, Macmillaaaaan! I haff developed a strain of highly virulent bakteeeria and I am putting zem in your vasser zupply to turn der vorld's brains into sauerkraut! Hahahaaaa! Unvortunately prolonged expozure to der bakteeeria has turned me into der bit of ein cliché tooooooooooo! Hahahaaa! " Then he broke three of my ribs.

"You Englander disgust me! " he raved. " When I vent to school I vas alvays bullied by the ****ing Englander [for transmission before a watershed period he did say 'star star star star ing', which was nice of him.] just because the patches on mein sleeves had svasticas on, and there was zat @?&%ú$!�!! ing war on [I can't remember how he pronounced that one.]"

"What have you done, you hideous nightmare! " I screamed as he sprayed a full cylinder of cliché gas into my face. These clichΘs were getting painful.

"Now you are as much of der cliché as mein zelf! "

"No! I'm here to fight for the planet! Take this, Nazi scum! "

"Take zis ,Englander bindveed! "

"Take this, uninspired dialogue-murmerer! "

"Take zis, stock cliché spouter! "

"Look here, German pondweed from hell, "I cliché d, "This isn't helping anyone, you know. I mean, can't we sit down like civilised adults and discuss this on a point-by-point basis? "

"Ja! In seventy seconds from now, I vill spray anuzzer gas into der room which forces der victim into adding totally redundant codicils to the end of every sentence. Apparently. As far as I can tell.

"Look, why can't you just get it into your head, you can't take over the world. Not everyone in the world goes to your surgery, so how will you infect everybody? "

"Oh. " he said. "I hadn't thought of that. "

I am now under the influence of the cliché gas so much that the above story is not true, so the cliché gas does not exist, so that story is true since I am not under its influence, so it exists and I am under its influence. Paradox? Not really, I always lie. And that's the truth.