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       ‘Let me just tell you the ending ...’

      Karl: D’you know the other week when I came up with a different idea of how we can make the world run and that.

      Steve: Can we just have a quick recap of that because I seem to remember it was a load of old arse.

      Ricky: It was ridiculous. It was saying that the world is over-populated so we should have a system whereby people live until they are seventy-eight – I don’t know how you can enforce that – but when they die they’ve got a little baby in their stomach, like a pip in an apple, and the baby carries on when they die. It wasn’t a theory, it was the ramblings of a mental case.

      Karl: Anyway listen, right, I’ve been thinking about it, right, and if we can’t do that, right, if it’s a ‘no’ to that idea …

      Ricky: It is a ‘no’.

      Karl: … Here’s another idea…

      Ricky: Ooh, you could win the Nobel prize for this one …

      Karl: There is a lot of ways in’t there, in the world, that some creatures and that go about sort of moving on, if you know what I mean …

      Ricky: Not really. Do you mean evolution?

      Karl: Yes, on that David Attenborough programme he’s always showing, yeah, little insects and what they have got to do. And there was one about a wasp, right, that had to fly about, right, for ages, looking out for a certain type of spider, right.

      Ricky: Which it lays its eggs in, correct.

      Karl: It whizzes down, it lands on its back, so it’s got to get that right. I don’t think the spider’s up for anything, the spider isn’t even aware of this. It’s not going, ‘I’ve got to look out for a wasp’, even though all this has got to be perfect timing. So this wasp dived down right, sat on the back of this spider, it injects it or something, with a maggot or something, right – and then that maggot lives off the spider for a bit. The spider knows it’s got a maggot in it.

      Ricky: No it doesn’t.

      Karl: It does.

      Ricky: No it doesn’t.

      Karl: And it’s making a web for it. It goes, ‘I’ve got something to look after here now. I’ve got responsibilities.’ It makes a web, right. It sort of reverses into it and puts the maggot on the web. The maggot sort of clings on to the web, maggot eats the spider – and then it moves on. Now if I came up with that idea you’d say, ‘That’s never gonna happen.’

      Ricky: Wake up! It’s not the fact that you came up with the idea for an old lady dying at seventy-eight with a baby growing in her – even though it’s nonsense, it’s no idea – it’s how could it be enforced. Even if scientists thought that was the best idea in the world how would they make it happen? Who’s gonna go, ‘That’s a good idea, we’ve never thought of that, get in Elsie. Elsie, we wanna try something …’

      Karl: Who told the wasp to look out for that spider? To go on its back?

      Ricky: What do you mean ‘Who told the wasp?’ – It’s evolution, it’s natural selection …

      Karl: Yeah but say, like, we have a kid at the moment. You don’t just jump on the back of a woman and go ‘There you go love’ and then a baby pops out.