E-Club ProThe Comedy Zone
The British Entertainment Regulation Police
Inspector Drab of B.E.R.P., the British Entertainment Regulation Police, opened the file on his desk and spread out the papers contained inside. On the top sheet a small colour photo stared back at him. The picture was of a strangely painted face wearing an inane, almost mad expression. Drab gazed at the picture for a few moments and gave a slight shake of his head. “What makes ordinary people want to do this sort of thing,” he thought to himself.
He skip read the details printed below the picture. “Muggles The Clown….crime record dating back to 2003…..Oct. 2003, caught making a balloon animal in the front room of 24 The Crescent at Jemima Cute’s 4th birthday party…..Mar 2004, prosecuted for making a group of 5 year olds laugh in unison at Little Acne Primary School…..July 2004, fined for repeatedly falling over in a comical way at a charity event in Upper Snobbery, etc, etc.”
Yes, Muggles was certainly a serial offender who was a curse to all society with his unlicensed sense of fun and his pathological desire to entertain people. And he was just one of a whole raft of similar offenders who were the very bane of Drab’s life. Jugglers, magicians, folk singers, Morris dancers, bell ringers, choristers, mime artistes, dancers, guitar players, string quartets, folk bands and many more, all of whom insisted on trying to give people a good time without paying their £3000 license fee. Didn’t these people realise the profound damage that they were doing to the fabric of society with their infernal ‘entertainment’?
If the government had not acted so decisively back in 2003 and produced its ground breaking policy on the licensing of live entertainment, heaven knows what a mess society would now be in. Imagine the chaos and disruption which would ensue if every 4 year old’s birthday party was allowed to have an unlicensed magician to provide entertainment! Whole areas of towns would have become no-go areas if the impact from these riotous affairs was allowed to go unchecked and untaxed.
Thankfully, the government saw sense in time and was able to put a stop to these damaging outbreaks of entertainment which for a hundred years or more had gone unchecked. Drab knew that his job was never likely to be under threat all the time there were people who insisted on singing ‘Happy Birthday’ at parties.
Only last week he was able, thanks to 12 months of careful surveillance and under cover work, to bust a party for a three year old being secretly held in the back of an old disused bus at the local vehicle reclamation centre, when the party revellers tried to allow the children to sing ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ without paying the license fee, and he still remembered with pride when his SWAT team crashed through the stained glass windows of the Little Dribbling Parish Church in order to arrest the local choir who were attempting to sing Christmas Carols to the village OAP Club. Yes, his job was undoubtedly one that he felt was truly worthwhile.
Prior to his appointment as head of B.E.R.P., Drab’s career had been one of pointlessness and frustration. Assigned as he was to the Drug Enforcement Unit in the city, he had spent five years stopping drug dealers, cracking down on drug related crime and preventing drug crazed murders. But he always felt that his talents as a policeman were being wasted on such unimportant law enforcement areas when there was a whole raft of dangerous entertainment going on almost unchecked.
But then his break came when the government finally decided to clamp down on those unregulated pre-school parties and all those unlicensed charity events, and now he finally felt that he was doing his bit for society by helping to create a world in which people could live without fear of untaxed entertainers.
He looked again at the picture of Muggles The Clown with a certain distaste. How could a man such as this be allowed to roam the streets when he was clearly such a danger to society with his painted face, his baggy trousers and his wild red frizzy hair. No, it was time to put a stop to Muggles and all his contemporaries once and for all. Drab reached for his ‘phone and dialed. “Hello, John? Drab here. Got any room left in your cells? Great. Got a serial offender to send you. Yes, I’ll send the file over. Thanks. Bye.”
