Unlikely heroes (From York Press)

Unlikely heroes

11:35am Friday 11th May 2012 in Columnists By Maxine Gordon

CHANCES are many of you will have seen the latest movie smash, Avengers Assemble, which has already taken £33 million at the UK box office – £11.6 million alone over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Featuring characters from Marvel comics, these super humans come together to form the Avengers, a formidable team with a mission to save planet earth from an alien enemy.

Watching Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America and Thor flex their might and unleash more destruction on Manhattan than a week of al-Qaeda attacks, I got to thinking of who might star in a British version.

Iron Man, aka hi-tech entrepreneur Tony Stark, has the best lines as well as the fastest ejector pads of the crew. He is the best equipped for fending off verbal attacks from the enemy as well as blasting himself away from sticky situations, so who better to step into his red metal suit than David Cameron.

Those witty quips will serve him well against Ed Miliband at PMQs, while the engine-thrusting boots could be deployed to whiz him away from all sorts of trouble.

In the latest episode, David “Iron Man” Cameron has become entangled with an all-powerful global media organisation with criminal undercurrents. Will his Avenger team mates rescue him from the double-headed alien Rupert-Rebekah, or can he escape their clutches using his own special powers? Tune in next time to find out.

In the comics, Iron Man has a rival for supreme super-hero status in the shape of Hulk. To refresh your memories, Marvel’s Hulk is a gentle, messy-haired boffin who erupts into a bright green monster at the first sign of rage. The Conservatives have their own gentle, rather scatty, giant, who is challenging Cameron for “top Tory” status. The re-elected mayor of London, Boris Johnson, could be a Hulk-in-waiting.

His scatty manner and messy-haired image is all a front. His biographer Sonia Purnell, claims he is hungrily ambitious, and pollsters are already putting Boris into a face-off against Cameron in a popularity war. As the Tories’ ratings slide, Boris “The Hulk” Johnson could well burst forth and reveal his true colour.

With his long hair, power mallet and the ability to summon up a destructive thunder storm at will, Thor is a super hero not to be ignored. The Tory equivalent has to be backbench MP Nadine Dorries who has been bringing all sorts of nasty weather fronts the Government’s way. In her latest lightning strike she accused Cameron and Osborne of being not only “two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk, but they are two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition, and no passion to want to understand the lives of others – and that is their real crime.” Ouch!

In his star-spangled uniform and protective shield, Captain America has the unfortunate role of being the super hero without any obvious super-hero powers. He’s the support act, useful for deflecting the enemy and acting as a human shield for the other Avengers. It’s a role perfect for the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick “Leg-up” Clegg, whose Lib Dems have taken the direct hit for most of the Government’s unpopular policies and are paying the ultimate price with decimation at the polls. The Lib Dems are haemorrhaging support; once seen as the pre-eminent party of local government, they now have fewer than 3,000 councillors, a historic low. Time for a fightback, Captain Clegg.

So here’s the pitch. Let’s make the Avengers sequel a made-in-Britain affair, starring our new cast list. The plot centres on a gang of alien fat felines who are depleting the planet of its wealth, leaving ordinary citizens to spiral into poverty. With diminishing levels of lucre left, the Avengers face a race against time to defeat these monster moggies and re-distribute the world’s finances in a fairer way.

And the catch? Takings from the box office will go towards paying off the deficit.