Botswana has a big problem, and the problem is big elephants. Elephants are very big. So big, in fact, that they can eat up to 250kg of food a day, which is the equivalent of you or me eating 250 mixed kebabs from Gardi’s, assuming that they each weighed 1 kilogram, which they don’t.

But still, it gives you an idea. The real problem, however, is not so much that elephants eat a lot, but that there are too many of them. According to my good friend Festus Gontembanye Mogae, Botswana now has close to 75,000 of the pachyderm pests, and they are becoming a real nuisance. 75,000 elephants each eating 250kg of food means that they collectively chomp through 18,750,000 kg every day. The situation is bad enough that the Setswana government has offered to give 1000 elephants to any nation for free, as long as they can provide transport. The obvious progression is to send them to Baghdad, where they would sort out sectarian violence in about ten minutes. “Well Ahmed, I would kill you for being a Sunni/American, but there’s this motherf****** elephant out on my lawn, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to deal with that first.”

The US would also have no trouble sending them over - an elephant’s not much bigger than a tank, and they’ve got loads of them over there. But once Baghdad is sorted, why not the world? They could be used to wander around potential nuclear research sites in Korea, or sent to disrupt the Spice Girls reunion gig.

Once again, you heard it here first.

Adrian Dangerhands