Asteroids are not my worry

How comforting to learn that asteroids and comets are to be examined by a Government task force. This column for one will sleep soundly in the knowledge that New Labour is investigating rocky space debris.

Only the other night I was thinking, great shaking heavens, an asteroid might drop out of the sky and land on my head. This worry was at least a distraction from fretting over how to spend my Lottery millions. Or how to fritter away the publishers' advance for my latest block-buster novel.

Tom Champagne has written to me again, too. He usually does at this time of year, kindly telling me that I am one of the chosen few. The fickle finger of fate, or the computer used by the Readers' Digest, has again hooked out my name. One letter has already informed me of my potential good fortune. Another is apparently zipping my way. This will tell me how to enter the prize draw, though I think I know the form.

It has been difficult this past year to keep up a pretence of normal life. The prize-winner's lot is not always an easy one. The urge to tell everyone about my good fortune has been great, though it now escapes me exactly how I spent the five pounds.

Of course, Tom Champagne does smile on someone, and it might just be me, though all things considered an asteroid on the head seems a more likely scenario.

For some reason the Government's latest task force has caused some chortling. Perhaps it is the name: the Near Earth Object task force. This was probably the result of one of those long meetings held just to choose a name. Various other possibilities were doubtless rejected, possibly including the Near Miss

Focus Group and Who Wants To Be Smashed Into A Million Pieces? In the end, heads buzzing with caffeine and frustration, someone settled on the Near Earth Object tag.

Oblivion from outer space is a suitably millennial topic, and is something for all the worriers and doomsters to dwell on now the world didn't end last Saturday and the Millennium Bug turned out to be about as threatening as a ladybird.

Newspapers love an asteroid. In November 1996, the Daily Telegraph ran a story below the headline: 'Close encounter as chaotic asteroid passes only 3.3m miles from Earth'. The story concerned an asteroid called Toutatis, which frequently whizzes our way. It is next due in our vicinity on September 29, 2004, when it will apparently pass four lunar distances from Earth.

After that, the next closest call will not be until the year 2060, when Tony Blair will be giving interviews on the difficulties of being Prime Minister once you are into your second century.

Another Telegraph headline, this time from March 14, 1998, read: 'Nasa to stage practice run to save Earth'. Yes, asteroids again.

This headline has much to recommend it, not least the accompanying mental picture of the heroes from the American space agency leaping into orbit, like Superman himself, to deflect two asteroids.

The potential for great and random destruction appeals to mankind's gloomier side, and every time we skim past the cusp of finality, we look for another excuse on which to expend our pessimism.

It all seems such a waste of time to me, but if the apocalyptic worriers are eventually proved right, they are welcome to come round to my place and gloat at the big hole in the ground where I once mocked their misery-making.

The truly worried could always invest in Asteroid Insurance, as offered by Mike St Lawrence of Texas. In case you are worrying how you might file a claim once a piece of space debris has flattened you, it is worth knowing that this insurance is a joke.

But then that could be said of the cover provided by many insurers.

06/01//00

If you have any comments you would like to make, contact Julian Cole directly at julian.cole@ycp.co.uk

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.