What this war needs is someone who can run it better

IF THE war in Bosnia were being run by . . .

British Rail

There would be a full-scale army mutiny every Friday

The BBC Board of Governors

They would announce that the war was not a resigning matter

The Jockey Club

It would turn out that the Jockey Club had ordered the war to be restarted in 1989, and had been trying to get the contestants back to their original positions ever since

BBC Radio

The idea of the war would already have been nicked by a commercial ITV station and turned into a successful TV series

BBC Television

The war would be staged in a special town built in Spain at a cost of millions of pounds to licence payers, and brought to an end as soon as viewing figures slumped

Hollywood

The war would be turned into a weekly TV sit-com called Aid Drops Keep Falling on my Head

British estate agents

They would have to change their description of the war as 'a small-scale, old-fashioned centre of activity set in some of the most delightful woodland and hill scenery in the unspoilt central region of ancient Yugoslavia' to 'an ugly modern monstrosity within easy reach of nowhere'

Hoover plc

All refugees would be promised a free flight out. They wouldn't get it

Paddy Ashdown

Lord Owen would get a free flight home

Rupert Murdoch

Every young Bosnian girl would be forcibly obliged against her will to buy a dish from BSkyB

Daily Mirror

Anyone in the war who had even had the slightest left-wing leanings would be put up against a wall and fired

Jeffrey Archer

The war would develop at a cracking pace, but there wouldn't be a single interesting character on either side

The International

Olympic Committee

They would announce that the war had been a great success and would be fought all over again in four years' time, in Manchester or whoever paid the most money

The MCC

The manager of the team would blame all setbacks in the war on Bosnian and Croatian food, on the standard of UN umpiring and on the disgraceful condition of the Bosnian terrain. Still, at least David Gower wouldn't get involved

Norman Lamont

He would tell us that all conditions were now in place to make for the right circumstances which would lead to the correct factors coming into play to ensure that the war would take a turn for the better almost any day now, really

Margaret Thatcher

Bombs would by now be falling on Brussels

Natwest

Both sides would be told they had been made bankrupt overnight, and would then get a bill for thousands of pounds to cover the cost of telling them (see the Natwest booklet: Starting Your Own Small War - How We Can Help To Make Money Out Of It)

Buckingham Palace

The whole place would have gone up in flames long ago

Hallmark Cards

To Bosnian, Serb,

Muslim, Croat,

Come these greetings

From our poet

E'en though gunshots

May disturb,

We wish you well,

Croat and Serb.

On this very

Special day,

Keep on bombing

All the way -

From now till 1994

Have a really lovely war]