It began, as all great revolutions do, with a daft idea and a dodgy hotel corridor. Wayne and I had decided that the downfall of John Major’s government could be engineered not with marches or manifestos, but by stealing his latest speech. Cut off the supply of waffle, and the nation might finally rise up.
The corridor outside his room smelt of stale carpet and nervous anticipation. We moved with the brisk, officious air of men who belonged there, clipboards under our arms, dark suits stiff at the shoulders. When the Prime Minister’s personal aide intercepted us, Wayne tapped his earpiece—a prop, of course—and muttered, “Security sweep. We’ve got reports something’s missing.”
Dressed in our best “we-look-like-security” suits, we barged into the Prime Minister’s hotel suite. Major was there in person, polishing his glasses with the weary air of a man who suspected even his spectacles might be plotting against him.
“Everything all right?” he asked mildly, as if two sweaty blokes bursting into his room was part of the day’s itinerary.
“Security check, sir,” I said, puffing out my chest. “We’ve had reports something’s missing.”
That was our excuse. Brilliant in theory, doomed in practice. Because the trouble was, nothing was missing. The desk was perfectly neat, the briefcase locked, the ashtray tragically devoid of drama. Our plan was already creaking like an old bicycle.
Wayne, however, wasn’t the sort to let logic get in the way of a coup. He scanned the room, muttered something about “needing to make it convincing,” and before I could stop him, he grabbed the wardrobe—an enormous mahogany beast—and heaved it across the carpet. With a grunt of triumph, he launched it straight through the window.
Glass exploded, pedestrians screamed, and the wardrobe landed in the street below with a thud that probably registered on the Richter scale.
Major removed his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and said in the tone of a man scolding naughty spaniels, “Gentlemen, if this is security, I’d hate to see burglary.”
We stood there, surrounded by shards of glass, feigning professionalism as if hurling hotel furniture into traffic was all part of the procedure. The speech, naturally, remained un-stolen. The government, un-overthrown. And Wayne, for the record, was banned from every branch of Travelodge in the country.
