FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT BENEATH A VOLCANO SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

THE COMPLETE MESS of thirty years of world domination by the United States of America has sent the world’s super-villains reaching for the Xanax and Valium of late.

“It’s the realization that taking over the world is a poison chalice that has caused the pain and distress, anxiety almost, among those whose ambition is to rule the Earth,” says Professor Ernst Blowfeld Spekter Emeritus Reader No 1 in Villain Studies at Oxford University. “The ambition for world domination has been the jewel in the crown of every nasty tinpot wannabee dictator and emperor since the ice melted over ten thousand years ago. But if American experience this last three decades – since the Soviet Union packed its bags and left – is anything to go by, then it is a pipe dream, unattainable, doomed from the outset.

“I know it will not stop the most persistent of villains but many of the more considered evil geniuses will be wanting to pursue other avenues. Perhaps the church or playing for Manchester United. Or running a Ponzi scheme. You see entropy has condemned ultimate villainy to be the author of its own destruction. Power = Hubris = Nemesis. Always has done, always will.

“The Americans are now withdrawing slowly from the world. Inch by inch. What will follow, I do not know. Except that it too will not last.”