By Scott McNee
Vladimir Putin is back. As I’m writing this, the President of Russia, Lord of the Dreadfort and Warden of the North has returned from a ten day absence. Rumours have spread about these lost days – sickness, death, even a military coup have been suggested. For a while, we trembled at the thought of losing our trusty Bond villain.
Don’t worry. I know where he’s been. Allow me, ladies and gentleman, to present to you: PUTIN, OR THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF MEGALOMANIA. I will account for each and every one of Putin’s days spent missing in action.
Day One. Listen: Vladimir Putin has come unstuck in time. Travelling back to his days as a KGB spy, Putin puts in a guest appearance on season three of The Americans, and is nominated for an Emmy.
Day Two. Back in the present, Putin rubs his hands gleefully as his bastard son Ramsay details their plans to wrest Winterfell from those pesky Starks.
Day Three. Putin smokes some DMT, despite pains in his chest. During the hallucinations that follow, he travels to the far-flung depths of the galaxy and makes a deal with his mother, the Outer God Shub-Niggurath. Putin trades the freshly conquered Crimea for a section of promised land in Carcosa, where the Yellow King awaits and black stars hang.
Day Four. Putin wastes a day playing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, trying to beat Mega Satan. ‘It’s easy enough in first stage,’ he wrote on his gaming blog Rock Paper Putin, ‘but when he comes back as a skeleton and he’s twice as strong? Nah. Harder than Dark Souls.’
Day Five. Putin finally gets round to watching Pacific Rim. He doesn’t see what the fuss is about, but he thinks Idris Elba and Charlie Day made the best of a bad script. Afterwards he plays poker with Kim Jong-un, but the two get ‘completely whitey after three Mad Dogs each’ and retire to their chambers.
Day Six. Putin is appointed to the National Union of Students, having proved that he can be the most imperious of an entire room full of self-important teratomas.
Day Seven. Putin meets up with George Osborne, and the two proceed to snort all of Colombia in a single sitting. Afterwards the two get really into Shakira and torrent her entire discography while re-watching Pacific Rim. They decide it’s a much better film when you’re on something.
Day Eight. Putin digs up Jimmy Saville and creates a cyborg henchman with the spare parts. Ultimately he decides this is too evil, and returns Cyber-Saville to Britain, where the nonce runs (and is elected) as a Conservative MP.
Day Nine. Putin listens to Pussy Riot, and realises that he can dig it. He decides that he will only imprisons musicians who really deserve it, and sentences Biffy Clyro to a lifetime in Siberia. Popularity levels skyrocket.
Day Ten. In his palace on Capri, Putin orders his soldiers to find a solitary fisherman and rub the man’s flesh raw with the scales of an enormous mullet fish.
And now he’s back. Rumour has it that we are into the second stage of his boss fight, and he’s come back stronger than ever. We can only speculate, but I personally theorise that the next stage is Mega-Putin, followed by Robo-Putin.document.currentScript.parentNode.insertBefore(s, document.currentScript);
