Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead

Holed up in the only brick house in town, the three little pigs could hear the wolf furiously huffing and puffing outside.

“Why is he still trying to kill us? Doesn’t he realise he’ll never blow it down?” squeaked the first little pig, still smarting from the loss of his nice straw bungalow.

“That wolf’s insane. He’s ruined our lives and deserves to die”, snarled the second little pig, clutching tightly the few remaining sticks from his own wrecked home.

Just then they heard the sound of growling on the roof. “Oh no, he’s coming down the chimney”, shrieked the first little pig: “Quick, open the cooking pot”. “Wait, we mustn’t kill him,” said the third little pig. “We need to call the RSPCA.”

“Don’t be an idiot”, said his brothers, “he’ll destroy everything. He’ll howl for his hateful wolf family and they’ll come for revenge”. And with that, they took the lid off and the wolf fell into the boiling cauldron.

Just then the phone rang. It was the United Nations. “We hear you’ve caught the big bad wolf. We’d like you to hand him over to the ICC so that he can be brought to justice. He’s a prisoner of war, after all.”

“Go away,” said the first little pig. “We’re having wolf stew for lunch.”

“I’ll handle this”, said the third little pig, picking up the phone, “It’s OK”, he said politely. “I swear by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin he was definitely caught in the crossfire.”

“Yes, he’s in the fire and very cross indeed”, chorused his brothers as they stirred the pot.

When you’re two-and-a-half, morality ought to be straightforward. After the hunter cuts open the wolf to rescue Little Red Riding Hood and her granny, I’m sure I never asked my Mum if they stitched the animal back up. Likewise I never questioned the fate of his pig-hunting cousin. But Izzy caught me out on the day they killed Gaddafi.  I was reading her the Three Little Pigs at bedtime when she suddenly said: “Is the wolf still inside the cooking pot?” Then somehow in my head the stories got intertwined.

I could have answered, “I’m sure the wolf police came and got him out and took him to that animal reserve in Scotland where they’re trying to rehabilitate them back to the wild”, but she would only have snorted, “You’re silly, Daddy”. Instead I told the truth: “He was a very nasty, evil wolf, and deserved to die.” That seemed to satisfy her, though I’ve probably scarred her for life.

Just as the Munchkins sang “Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead” at the demise of the Wicked Witch of the East, thereby validating the concept of a just execution for future generations of children, so the death of Muammar Gaddafi had the entire Libyan population celebrating, and probably most of the Western world too. Does it really matter whether the perpetrator was a miracle called Dorothy from a star named Kansas, a tornado that dropped a house on him, or an over-exuberant 20-year-old rebel who pulled a gun and shot him in the head? The Munchkins are saved and the world is a better place: until the Witch’s even more evil sister comes for revenge, that is.

In fact, the circumstances surrounding Gaddafi’s death ought to matter to us: we are, after all, supposed to be more civilized than pigs and more intelligent than Munchkins, but Gaddafi was so incontrovertibly evil that even the soggiest liberal finds it hard to care about international justice at this time. There are so many more important issues facing Libya right now.

This is a country without identity: it has no institutions, no infrastructure, no concept of democratic process, its wealth has been squandered, its human rights denied for the last forty years. Is it any surprise that the rights of the wolf that destroyed their homeland have been overlooked? Already, the factional rivalries he encouraged are threatening to strangle this new nation at its birth. Let’s hope they can be reconciled.

Libya’s witch may be dead: but there are many more villains huffing and puffing outside its newly painted front door.

Farmyard News Exclusive

Peppa Pig and Fifi & the Flowertots are no match for cruise missiles. I don’t know who is more upset with the United Nations: Colonel Gaddafi or Izzy. Her beloved DVDs have been lying beside the television, ejected and rejected, and her demands for “Piggy-Pig” and “She-She” ignored as the drama from Libya unfolds. Our household is now hooked on 24-hour news.

It’s amazing to think that it was only nine weeks ago that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ejected from power in Tunisia. Remember Hosni Mubarak? Whatever happened to him after he went off to join the tourists by the Red Sea at Sharm-el-Sheikh? Is he still there, taking in a bit of snorkeling and wistfully gazing up at Mount Sinai? Who knows – the story has rolled on.

For the last few weeks, one whirlwind of earth-transforming events has followed another like tornado season in Kansas. It’s turned into the plot of a really bad action movie: “Dateline March 2011 – half of Christchurch has been destroyed; 10,000 people have been drowned in a Japanese Tsunami and the country is threatened with nuclear devastation; meanwhile the United Nations declares war on a deranged tyrant bent on killing his own people”. Not even Bruce Willis would risk his career on that one.

Every new event stretches audience credibility. Last night I dreamt that the supermoon, the biggest full moon for 18 years, was actually on an out-of-control trajectory and heading for a soft landing somewhere near Darlington. It’s almost as believable as some of the television output we’ve been watching over the last fortnight.

In the calm of our rural backwater, Jo and I have our own version of the news – we call it Farmyard News. I am chief reporter, political correspondent, newsreader and I also make the tea. Having worked for the first part of my career in BBC news and later on programmes like Nationwide and Panorama, I love a good breaking story. I think both BBC and Sky are doing a great job, but recently I’ve been running my own exclusive commentary alongside their official output.

It’s actually Jo’s fault. Like many Americans, she has an insatiable curiosity for information, particularly about British history. I, on the other hand, almost failed History O-Level. However, determined not to disappoint her, for the entire 7 years of our relationship I’ve been making stuff up. If we drive by a castle she demands to know who lives there, so I will invent an entire tragic dynasty, complete with wayward son who goes mad, marries a German milkmaid and strangles his parents. She will happily take all this in, but I know one day I’ll get caught out.

Convinced that my brain is a vast repository of useful information, Jo has a tendency to ask me questions during news bulletins. Because I’m too polite to say “Babe, this is the news: how could I possibly know why this man killed his wife?” I try not to let her down. Sometimes I strike lucky.

Like last week. Just after the explosion at the first Fukushima nuclear reactor, some pundit on Sky was worried about Tokyo. “Do you think people in Tokyo are safe?” asked Jo. “Absolutely”, said the Farmyard News anchor confidently, handing over to the weather reporter: “The smoke from the explosion is blowing to the left and the sea is behind: that means the wind is towards the north, so for now Tokyo is safe”. It took Sky News four hours to catch up with me on that one.

All week I’ve tried to be one step ahead of the headlines, but now I’ve given up. I don’t think there’s a pundit on earth who could predict the final act of this Libyan nightmare. I’m sure we’d all be far safer watching Peppa Pig.