69 for 1 by Alan Coren Page B

roast chestnuts from Joanna Weinberg, there was an
advertisement from Times Offers Direct which put both these women to professional shame. How Ms Miers will ever hold up her head again after telling her readers to marinate the duck for ‘a
minimum of one hour, but preferably three to four’, or Ms Weinberg go out in public after telling hers, even more slaphappily, to roast the chestnuts until ‘one of them pops with a loud
bang’, I cannot begin to imagine. The sooner each coughs up £19.95 for an Artex clock to bolt beside her hob, the likelier both are to stave off their leaving parties.
    For the Artex clock, according to the rubric which so unprecedentedly gobsmacked me, is ‘guaranteed to be accurate to less than a second in a million years.’ That is one hell of a
guarantee. I know it to be an honest one, too, because it carries
The Times
imprimatur, which means that the most nit-picking lawyers in the world – they have a collection of my own
nits which is second to none – have nodded it through. They are confident that if, in 1,000,2005 AD, an owner of an Artex clock bangs on the front door of
The Times
and demands his
money back on the grounds that, after only 999,999 years, his clock is two seconds fast, he will not have a leg to stand on.
    If, that is, he has legs at all. He’s a queer cove, your Johnny Evolution, and anything might have happened to
Homo sapiens
by then. Either that, or global ennucleation will have
ensured that the only creature left to survive will, by 1,000,2005, have developed into
Cockroach sapiens
, who will have a lot of legs and be able to carry several iffy Artex clocks while
still having a couple of legs free to bang on the
Times
door with. Provided, of course, that it is still
The Times
and not
The Daily Cockroach
; in which event the
management may well disclaim any obligation to honour the guarantee offered by their predecessor in 2006. Should you wish clarification on this point before ringing 0870 789 0716 to order your
clock, I suggest you ring
The Times
’ lawyers. If, mind, unable to contain your excitement, you ordered it as soon as you saw Monday’s ad, I really don’t know what to
suggest.
    Some of you may not care: you may hold the view that since the clock will by 1,000,2005 no longer be yours but the property of a cockroach to whom you have no genetic connection, that is an end
of the matter. Others more optimistic, blindly confident that the human race will not, any day now, vaporize itself, may be mortified at the thought that its distant descendant – let us call
it grandchild 786 – will discover that, having been handed down successfully through 30,000 generations, its Artex clock is now on the fritz. Worse yet, your descendant may discover
this by a life-changing shock: it could turn up for the first day at its first job, dressed in its smart new outfit, clutching its smart new briefcase, only to hear: ‘What time do you call
this? You should have been here two seconds ago,’ and find itself out on its ear.
    This could be even more disastrous: if the human race has not vaporized itself, by 1,000,2005 AD there will be, according to my slide-rule, over two trillion people on the planet. Jobs will
therefore be extraordinarily scarce, and employers extraordinarily choosy (hence the punctuality discriminator), so that anyone luckless enough to lose his on the very first day might well have no
option but to jump off Westminster Bridge and drown himself. Or rather, given the effect global warming will have had on the River Thames by then, break his neck.
    Did I hear you ask if the Artex is an alarm clock? Not half it isn’t.

Now We Are Sex
    A DVISERS to the Department of Education have advocated compulsory sex instruction in primary schools. A bit late for
that, surely?
    daer santa:
    this crismas I would like a set of wills, I do not want no ordnry peddle car tho, yu canot pull wiv sunnink ware berds can see your nees going up and down, yu