“Welcome, welcome to the Jay Kay Bahr TV Show. I'm pleased to be with you. Welcome!”

Big applause.

“And my first guest is... is Jim McClane, the Clone Master. Welcome Jim!”

In walks Jim to big applause – shakes hands.

“Always glad to be here, Jay, thank you.”

“You've been having fun in your home country, right Jim?”

“Well, not so much fun for me...”

“Before Jim explains, let's look at a video clip. This is the prime minister of Jim's country giving a speech in parliament. He wants a law to ban cloning.”

“Unfortunately a second person starts the same speech, but ten seconds later. And a third and a fourth and so on. They all look like the prime minister. Anything to do with you, Jim?”

Jim laughs. “I created two hundred clones of the prime minister, ten seconds between each one. You can't understand a word in the clip and it is real loud. The speaker is no longer in control and all the members of parliament are running to the exits to protect their ears.”

“You made a complete fool of your prime minister, Jim?”

“Yep! But I did not have much choice. Two weeks ago I returned to my country to arrange some shows, a new series of “Well! Clone me!” but none of the TV networks were interested. Worse still, some politicians and church leaders were saying bad things about cloning.”

“Can you imagine? One year in jail for every clone I make. And the archbishops were claiming that I murdered my clones. I haven't killed anybody. Clones are temporary, they don't die, they just disappear.”

“A discussion about cloning? Why not? But no, none of the TV networks or the print media wanted to talk to me. No one had a good word to say about cloning.”

“What to do? What could I do? Obvious, I can clone, so I cloned.”

“I went to a service in a large church in the south of the country one Sunday and waited. A procession of priests walked slowly from the back of the church and there was the archbishop himself swinging a thurible all over the place.”

“Go for it! I cloned the archbishop. Soon there were two hundred archbishops all swinging their thuribles. The procession got longer and longer. The church was full of archbishops and worse.”

“The smoke from the thuribles was awful. I had to leave and so did many other people. Panic – everybody left the church – fortunately nobody was hurt – the cloned archbishops disappeared leaving a mountain of smoking, brass thuribles.”

“Bit of a disaster, eh Jim?”

“That's what I thought at first, but the archbishops got the idea. Several churchgoers complained about the smoke and how they had had hallucinations and had seen thousands of archbishops.”

“Archbishops are special, there are not many of them, they certainly did not want many of them, no, no, no. They banned thuribles and stopped talking about cloning.”

“I would have promised to not clone archbishops, but no one was listening. I cloned the prime minister as you have seen. I won, no more bad words about cloning, but no TV shows either. I decided to leave the country and try my luck here.”

“But that was not the end of your troubles, was it Jim?”

“No, Jay. I was watching the prime minister's speech on TV in a hotel room very close to the parliament building (I can't do cloning at long distance), when the police broke in and arrested me. They handcuffed me, they told me that they would march me down and out to a waiting police van. The media were waiting for me and I would look stupid.”

“Before I disappear I like to put a metal bucket on my head. It falls loudly to the floor when I go – big effect – cheap trick. The handcuffs fell to a clang on the floor.”

“I reappeared in the square outside the hotel, a journalist recognised me and a policeman arrested me.”

“Go for it! I cloned the policeman and myself.”

“OK, another video clip. You can see the same policeman arresting Jim two hundred times and marching him to the police van. Can you believe four hundred people in one police van?”

“Probably just a big pile of handcuffs in the van, but I got bored and that is why I'm here on the other side of the planet talking to you, Jay.”

“What are you going to do next?”

“I think I'll ignore my country for a decade. I'm doing a series of live, outdoor cloning shows going up the east coast and then down the west coast.”

“Thank you for being here, Jim McClane, the Clone Master.”