THE CAPTAIN PLANET

Do you hear that sound? Those quiet scratchings. That’s the noise of millions of schoolbooks being rewritten, now that Pluto has disappeared from the diagram. Well, not literally, not in a doomsday weapon demonstration kind of way. "Heh heh, Mr President - Imagine if this little planet had been your West Coast? I give you one hour to comply!"

No, Pluto has been demoted by an astronomy conference, which is a bit more impressive as a convention achievement than just taking over the hotel bar on a Saturday night and singing rude songs about astrologists.

How did it happen? Was it like Pete Best, quietly asked into the office and told he wasn’t going to be in the Beatles anymore. "The thing is, Pluto, you’ve just not got what it takes to be a planet in the 21st century."

Maybe it was really formal, Pluto being marched down a column of raised telescopes, then getting its planetary epaulets torn off. Poor old Pluto, one minute orbiting with the big guys, now pushed in with a bunch of C-list asteroids. Spending its days opening office crèches and considering a presenting offer from a shopping channel.

Fact is though, this planet is far too distant to really worry about what a bunch of Earth astronomers think, even when they called it a planet in the first place. It's like me hearing that I've been voted Funniest Man in the Ukraine by Ukraine Fishermen's Weekly. It's nice n'all, but not really something that makes a whole lot of impact in my day.

"What? That blue dot thinks I'm not a planet? Talk to mah dark side cause the sunny side ain't listening!"

Today's Klown College speech was provided by Sideshow Gaz. Angry, angry young man.