The Home Office has thrilled everyone today with the announcement that the lettering on the covers of the new blue patriotic passports is to be printed in ink made from iron pyrite.
“It was a tough call,” Ms 500M Pounds told LCD Views, “we had thought about ritually slaughtering a unicorn and making ink out of its blood, but we went with the fools gold in the end.”
Why? Surely a unicorn, as it features on the coat of arms, would have been more appropriate? Especially in the context of the reasons for spending half a billion quid changing the colour of passports to a colour we could have had anyway?
“It was a real shock to all of us,” Ms 500M answered, “but we couldn’t actually locate a unicorn for the purpose.”
But politicians are promising unicorns now for pretty much everything going, surely you could have just taken an incy wincy bit of blood from one of those?
“Are you sitting down?”
Yes. I always sit when interviewing fictional characters.
“Unicorns don’t exist.”
Get out of here.
“Seriously,” Ms 500M was adamant, “I should know as I’ve just finished overseeing a study into their habitats, feeding patterns, reproductive cycles, best way to catch and tame etc. Unicorn farming is a cornerstone of all future policy. It was a bloody shock to discover they aren’t real.”
So what are you going to do?
“Buggered if I know,” Ms 500M replied, “spend money hand over fist and hope something magical happens is the most likely course of action.”
Maybe you could start replacing unicorns with iron pyrites all over the shop?
“Now that’s the sort of advice we pay well for. Do you want a job as a consultant at DExEU?”
How long would I have to stay for?
“Not long. No one does.”