Stung by accusations they aren’t taking the small boats crisis seriously, preferring to let the English police deal with migrants once they arrive in Kent, the French police announced they were sending their top man, Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the Sûreté.
Clouseau spent his first few days standing on the beach, calmly watching the migrants as they climbed into small boats and set off across the channel. When his assistant François suggested they’d done enough observation and should actually do something, Clouseau agreed, saying it was time for lunch. Moreover, that afternoon and the three days afterwards were a holiday to commemorate the birthday of the President’s dog. “And after zat, of course, it’s ze long weekend.”
When Clouseau returned the following Wednesday, refreshed and more determined than ever to do his duty for France, migrants were nevertheless able to get past him because he was distracted by his manservant Cato constantly attacking him without warning.
He then formulated a plan to disguise himself as a migrant, infiltrate the group and switch their dinghy for one with a leak, forcing them to remain in France. However, a series of comedic mishaps meant he ended up in the leaky dinghy himself, sinking while the bemused migrants sailed past him in a catamaran, the water washing off the blackface makeup you’d never get away with these days.
After several more disasters, he was hauled over the coals by Chief Inspector Dreyfus, who called him an incompetent, bumbling halfwit who couldn’t run a bath, and asked if he’d ever considered a career in politics.
This left the crisis in the hands of the policeman from ‘Allo ‘Allo, who later reported “I was woking on the bitch when I saw a crood of purple climbing into a small boot.”
image from pixabay
