Ten things that could go horribly wrong with Barack Obama’s inauguration today

1. A throng of foreign political leaders, each desperate to be the first photographed with him, causes the podium to collapse as they rush him.


2. When presented with the Bible to swear his oath on, he asks: “Actually do you have a Qur’an? Or possibly the collected fatwas of Ayatollah Khomeini?”


3. Sarah Palin shoots him.


4. As soon as he’s been sworn in, he grabs at his face, which turns out to be a mask, ripping it off. He’s really Dick Cheney! He laughs maniacally and cries: “Fools! Now I will destroy you all,” before proceeding to destroy us all with an orbiting death ray, built using public funds by a private contractor in which he owns shares. (Well, you never see the two of them photographed together, do you?)


5. The credit crunch proves to be so bad that the US can no longer afford an inauguration ceremony; the presidency is abolished and the White House sold at auction for $240,000 to the parents of a Chinese student who want somewhere to stay when they’re visiting.


6. Jimmy Smits turns up drunk and heckles, then tries to pitch a screenplay he’s written called The Santos Clause, in which neither Aaron Sorkin nor anyone else has any interest whatsoever.


7. George Bush’s final act in his second term is to pardon himself for the crime of seizing a third term, which had been the penultimate act of his second term a couple of minutes earlier.


8. A retired Hawaiian midwife remembers that Obama was actually born on 4 August 1959 and not 1961, as had been mistakenly written on his birth certificate; as Hawaii only became the 50th state on 21 August 1959, he was therefore not born in the US and is not eligible to become president.


9. Obama decides that, for tactical reasons, he should not be sworn in: as he is a Democrat, this could alienate the conservative-leaning independent voters on whose goodwill his re-election campaign will depend. He decides to spend his first term just as president-elect, which he has thus far been very good at, while Joe Biden actually runs the place. Obama gets himself a daytime talk show, called Barack Hussein Obama Talks With Supposedly Ordinary Yet In Fact Theatrically Dysfunctional Americans Regarding Their Personal Problems, In Front Of A Surprisingly Judgmental Studio Audience Who Seem Not To Appreciate Just How Audacious Hope Can Be. It gets cancelled after three episodes.


10. His inauguration speech fails to solve all the problems of the world.