Comrade Dad

The year is 1999, the setting is Londongrad. (The Russians engineered a brilliant and bloodless coup in 1989 - 27 June to be exact.) Direct listening satellites are in the sky and there's a rumour that there are chickens to be had down Mile End.

Have you heard the one about the Albanian girl who got pregnant? Well it appears that the entire USSR/GB has, but, undeterred, Reg sets out on a clean-up campaign that Mrs Whitehouse would have admired.

For Reg , living in the USSR/GB is a dream, but sometimes the line between a dream and a nightmare is a narrow one.

If God was still allowed he'd bear a remarkable likeness to Chairman for Life V. S. Hoskins, and as the Chairman says (thought number 80A), 'The family that prays together ends up in a psychiatric hospital.'

'Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and saves electricity.' Such sound and lateral thinking cannot protect Reg from a spasm of good old-fashioned jealousy.

Some people will do anything to attain the dizzy heights of party membership. Reg is 'some people', but unhappily suffers from an ongoing ideological vertigo.

In transport once graced by some commissar's little old mother, Reg takes his family to the seaside (avoiding Dorking and Horsham en route). But, as every good comrade knows, there's a right and a wrong end to every cornucopia.