At last, with Gordon Brown deciding to throw in the towel and resign, his cabinet colleagues decided it would be a worthy gesture to name a railway locomotive after him. None of the privatised operating companies wanted to be associated with him but a bright spark remembered that the government owned the National Railway Museum. A senior 'Sir Humphrey' went from Whitehall to the museum at York to investigate the possibilities.
"We have a number of locomotives at the National Railway Museum without names," the museum curator told the top civil servant. "Mostly freight locomotives though."
"Oh dear, that's not very fitting for a prime minister," said Sir Humphrey. "How about that big green one, over there?" he said, pointing to 4472.
"That's already got a name" said the curator. "It's called 'Flying Scotsman'."
"Oh. Couldn't it be renamed?" asked Sir Humphrey. "This is a national museum after all, funded by the taxpayer."
"I suppose it might be considered," said the curator. "After all the LNER renamed a number of their locomotives after directors of the company, and even renamed one of them Dwight D Eisenhower."
"That's excellent", said Sir Humphrey, "So that's settled then .. let's look at renaming 4472. But how much will it cost? We can't spend too much, given the state of the economy."
Well, said the curator, "We could always just paint out the 'F'."
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Topic: In honour of Gordon Brown (joke) (Read 790 times)