“F is for fire that burns down the whole town, U is for Uranium… bombs! N is for no survivors!”
While you may read this as the negotiating position for either (or both!) sides within the Brexit fandango, it is, surprisingly, not.
These are the words of SpongeBob SquarePants. For those of you unfamiliar with SpongeBob SquarePants (shame on you) he is a yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple at the bottom of the sea.
He works in a fast-food burger joint and wears brown shorts and a red tie. He has a friend called Patrick who is a starfish and not hugely bright. He is always joyously, unbreakably, happy. I’ll be straight with you. SpongeBob is not actually real. He is a cartoon. He features in a TV show of the same name, and in a number of big screen movies too.
Last week SpongeBob’s creator Stephen Hillenburg died from motor neurone disease – that vicious, cruel, unstoppable horror. He was just 57. It is sad news.
Like a lot of people, I became aware of SpongeBob through my children. They were entranced. After sitting down to watch it once, so was I.