Miles "Not Mad After All"
Town Council leader Derek Miles has revealed that he is not, in fact, going insane, but has been a victim of American Soap Syndrome, or ASS.
Various news sources including the Citizen have carried stories recently that cast Cllr Miles in a “delicate” frame of mind, his behaviour growing increasingly bizarre. But following investigation by professor Holly Oaks, of Dallas University, it has been discovered that the crazy antics of the past few months were down to Miles channelling the spirit of his own fictional evil twin brother.
The Syndrome, so called because of the proliferation of evil twin brothers on popular cheesy Channel 5 import Sunset Beach, can cause a victim to unwittingly become their own malicious sibling, despite the fact they are not actually a twin. Generally the evil half of the equation takes over the sufferer’s life, often with the aim of relieving them of all their money.
“In this unusual case,” said Prof. Oaks, “Councillor Miles’ evil twin spirit aimed to end his political career through a series of manic episodes and increasingly disjointed letters to local papers. It is possible that the twin was working in cahoots with another local councillor such as Bob Farms, of the fictional Hardwick parish; but it is equally likely that he was aiming for his own unexplained outcome.”
No documented cases of ASS exist in the UK, but it does proliferate on the other side of the pond. “Generally,” continued the professor, “ASS manifests itself in one of the following three ways. There is of course evil twin channelling. Then there is Amnesia, where a person is apparently dead but reappears months or years later with no memory of who they are. This consequence of the syndrome is believed to be a strain which developed in Australia in the mid-nineties. Finally there is what we call Disguising, where someone leaves the area and then returns with a moustache, a wig and a just-about-plausible back story about who they are – and often turn out to be a ghost anyway.”
Councillor Miles was said to be overjoyed that the syndrome had finally been diagnosed. “Apparently,” he said, “It’s not like the flu where you can think to yourself, ‘hey I have this problem’ and go and bother your local GP. Because you are becoming your own evil twin you think everything’s perfectly normal.”
“The treatment was awful though,” continued Miles, now fully recovered. “They had to delete E4 – and E4+1 – and all the Channel 5 channels from my Freeview box so that I didn’t inadvertently catch a rerun of Dynasty or the OC. Then I had to watch EastEnders constantly for three weeks, as nothing so absurd ever occurs on Albert Square.”
Miles was looking forward to returning to writing his own incoherent letters to the Town Crier, which now often only features correspondence from councillors on its letters page; and to keeping an eye on exactly how much money the Town Centre Manager was giving away to people he had never met.
Fucking brilliant!