"We will find them. We will capture them. And we will punish them".
This immediately rang a note of recognition but where from?
Was this just a policeman talking with passion?
No.. It was just too familiar.
After a couple of minutes I had it.
This was "Taken".
The police officer thought he was Liam Neeson.
Now, nobody is a bigger fan of Taken than me.
But is this what passes for a police spokesman nowadays - someone who has seen Taken more than once (and of course it takes one to know one!) and delivers their lines live from Hollywood.
Maybe the arsonist had seen Firestarter more than once or played himself a little too much Prodigy.
Entertainment is bleeding into real life.
Except it's bleeding both ways, ebbing and flowing, arterial and venous. To and from.
And then we hear that Youssou N'dour wants to be the President of Senegal.
Now nobody loves "Seven Seconds" more than me. And I think, what the hell, why not?
And if Wyclef Jean still wants to be president of Haiti, go for it.
At least these musicians have a high enough public profile to care about their legacy. Perhaps passion, accountability and popularity isn't a bad place to start trying on a little politics for size.
(We'll put aside the hunger for power for the time being - I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt).
We should go further, I'd like to make Mark Gatiss the Prime Minister and appoint Steven Moffat as director of well... pretty much anything he wants.
I understand television is the defining art form of our lifetimes but artistic minds are capable of (and seemingly frequently desire) much more.
If we even mention the word "reality" now we are pretty much referring only to entertainment.
These are new times.
We need new solutions to new problems.
Perhaps it is time to rebrand real-life.
So off you go, start with your own. It's January and you have a happy new world to shape.
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