DICTATOR BENEVOLENS IN THE EARLY SIXTIES a new game was launched. Diplomacy, a game of international intrigue and perfidy which, played after supper, would introduce to any domesticity scenes reminiscent of the Stretford End after a disputed goal. Marriages would dissolve, old friendships crumble and the Cold War recede into pallid insignificance. I’ve invented a new game which I believe to be nearly as good. It is called Benign Despots.

Probe asked guardedly. Probe is a teacher. He likes the occasional package tour.

“Yeah. That too,” snapped Frond. “And who, may I ask,” asked Probe frostily, “is going to implement this enormity?”

Frond tapped his sternum with his index finger.

“ I am,” he said. “There’ll be a department.”

What you do is this. Each player must imagine that in response to popular demand he has done the decent thing and assumed absolute power. It is after breakfast on the first morning of his era. The country aches for his reforms. So then what are his first three swingeing (now there’s a word for the fourth world!) reforms, the measures that will set the country on course for enlightenment? None of your first hundred days, these measures are to be effective by lunchtime. So players are given just five minutes to think. Then an order is agreed, and each despot in turn outlines to the rest these three pintles of his policy. No one may interrupt. At this stage all opposition, outrage, civU disobedience and armed rebellion must be restrained. But when everyone has spoken,, then each in turn must, like a politician on a radio phonein programme, answer, say for ten minutes, the listeners’ questions. This is when it gets interesting. This is when terrorism and general mayhem begin to break out.

I looked at Frond closely. There were signs that power had begun already to corrupt.

Probe and I listened in amazed silence to Frond’s other two measures. “Everyman-Jack” was to smarten up his own house, outside and in, and all young people were to get stuck-in to picking up the empty beer-cans.

Probe’s turn. Proportional representation. Trade union decisions by postal ballot. Reasoned opposition to antidenationalization.

I was stupified. Dumbfounded. One thing I can’t stand after a drink or two is someone being reasonable. Someone else, that is.

“You bigot!” I stammered. “You Tory! You . . . you democrat!”

Before I seized the platform I sank a pint of real ale. I understood how the Fourth World hung on my every word.

“First,” I pronounced grandly, “ I abolish all advertising.”

“Why?” That’s Probe - intent on getting on my nerves.

I have these two friends —I’ll call them Frond and Probe. A few nights ago in the pub the three of us were having a game of Benign Despots. Frond, that gentle, harmless dreamer, was the first to speak.

“I’m putting a stop to i t” , he growled, like Genghis with the gout. “All this moving about.”

Probe was non-plussed. But I approved. “You mean,” I said, immediately breaking the only rule, “You intend to cut consumption of expendable fossil fuels.”

“I do not,” Frond snarled. He waved his arms about. “I mean I ’ll stop all t h i s . . . gadding about.”

“Because it is symptomatic of the lie at the heart of all capolitico-industrialism.” Yes, well every despot must feel free to create a little of his own jargon.

“What lie?” That’s Probe for you. I couldn’t just then remember why I had put up with Probe all these years.

“I’ll tell you what lie,” I said, trying to think fast. “Isn’t it obvious? I mean this... I mean all this advertising and stuff.”

Probe gave a suave grimace. And that, I tell you, fried his hash!

“Second,” I shouted, “ I abolish all schools.”

“You’ll put a stop to foreign travel?”

But Probe doesn’t rartle easily.

“And who will take care o f the children’s education?”

This time I'd done my homework. “Primary education will be the concern of the family. All secondary education will be achieved by a system of apprenticeship.”

“And who will teach French?” “If you have to learn French you can go the hell to France."

Frond raised his face from his beer. “No way,” he said. "Gadding about. I ’ve put a stop to it.”

As my final measure I slammed a punitive tax on all mass-produced consumer goods. I shouted down Probe’s opposition and explained how this must result in the re-establishment o f craftsmanship, of quality, of work that was fulfilling in itself. A couple of sentences and I had depicted a new golden age in which every man, woman and child would be eating his mung-beans off his own hand-turned wooden platter. I hadn't expected Probe to be enthusiastic, but what amazed me was Frond. I thought he’d be on my side. But no, he too began to go for my jugular. I think it was the mass-production tax that had upset him — any shortage of beer-cans and his entire Youth Employment Strategy was in tatters.

Then, mercifully, the landlord called time. We drove home in crabbed, suspicious silence. Back in bed I tossed a long time in a beer-slop of maudlin. My two old friends. Similar background. Tried and proven loyal across a minefield of years. If I couldn't get those two to toe an enlightened line without recourse to the bugging of phones and a private KGB, then what chance did I have with mankind?

But next morning, through the mists of hangover, I saw it all in more positive light. On the above evidence it was clear that the fact man had survived his own company, that he had evolved even just this far, was a mystery deeper and more encouraging than I had supposed. Perhaps, I reasoned, those who resort to prayer as the best means of ensuring that Thy Kingdom come on earth have inside knowledge. Certainly something pretty mysterious has got to happen if we are going to accommodate this inevitability of so many individual, warring utopias. I mean, even between friends.

Benign Despots. Try a game sometime. I think you will see what I mean.**