As it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between actual political news and Daily Mash articles these days, you may have missed an important moment in international diplomacy a few weeks ago in which a humble washing machine took centre stage… of the world stage.
At the end of September, in what has to be noted as a cautionary tale for anyone involved in the dissemination of facetious blogs or articles, Boris Johnson was sent to Turkey in his new role as British foreign secretary to meet President Erdogan, a man who only a few months earlier he had compared to a goat and labelled as a w****r in order to make a limerick rhyme for a poetry competition held by The Spectator (technically it’s impossible to be both, but Johnson’s Oxford degree was in Classic Banter- or Classics, as it’s also known- not Biology).
The chances of BoJo being greeted by a benevolent Erdo were also lowered by the fact that the president’s last holiday was completely ruined by an attempted coup d’etat. The uprising was believed by many in Turkey to be orchestrated by the CIA, making the Turkish government even more suspicious of leaders from other NATO countries, especially when they have close ties to America and completely implausible hair.
It seemed like we were heading straight for World War III until Boris remembered that he had a Turkish washing machine at home. After some initial confusion, it was established that this wasn’t some kind of vaguely racist joke about his cleaning lady, but a compliment aimed at the country’s contribution to the world of white goods.
Emotionally drained by months of political strife, this electronic goods-based olive branch melted President Erdogan’s heart. He realised that the CIA weren’t trying to destablise the Middle East after all, and that the Adam Curtis documentary he just watched on BBC iPlayer, while being a beautiful piece of filmmaking, was arguably quite speculative with some of the assumptions it made about geopolitics.
Johnson and Erdogan now Skype regularly, swapping comedic poems and laying the groundwork for a future trade deal ‘that will make the EU look like a big pile of pantalons.’
Next month we’ll look at how Nikita Khrushchev’s very reliable and reasonably priced American washing machine ended his standoff with Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, narrowly avoiding the complete destruction of civilisation as we know it.
In the meantime, feel free to get in touch if you require any washing machine repairs, although we cannot promise to include an international diplomatic service with our callouts.