A very, very potted history of the french revolution *for young people*

Money was tight and times were hard

A thousand years ago today - give or take a few weeks - the king of France's latest squeeze (who was the tool of the devil, without doubt) helpfully suggested to the starving masses that those who couldn't afford to buy bread :

"Ought to jolly well go out and buy squillions of donuts ... only ring-donuts, mind, the ones with the holes in the middle ... which should then be daintily dunked in the finest of hot chocolate ... and thereupon distributed to all familly members in equitable, nourishing, bite sized chunks" sugar+chocolate = the best narcotic known to the labouring man at the epoch

Suprisingly, such a suggestion was met with much incomprehension and consternation, for, with the exception of insrupulous and recalcitrant beetroot growers, no one else had access to sugar

As for chocolate ... weeeell, given that Mr Cadbury and Mr Hershey had yet to be born, Francis Drake had had to go back to the states, with his tail between his legs, having just mistakenly delivered a sack of taters to the first queen Elizabeth (the current queens' dearly departed mum) and, but also, that chocolate was only obtainable from the equivalent of sleazy, middle ages sex emporiums - your average field worker was left with the only option of dipping his solitary dunkin' donut in mud from the river

Much gnashing of teeth and a bit of disorderly conduct ensued

Inevitably, there was a bit of a shoot out at the parisien equivalent of Alcatraz and the liberation of lots of very bad, scary people, notably "Pierre the hatchet" ... who managed to to catch up with the king and queen ... and did what serioulsy agrieved people do : he lopped off their heads in a fit of hot chocolate and dunkin' donut induced cold turkey

The end