"I can't believe I just did that," he spat.

Cherie was hastily preparing a last supper in the kitchen. "Did what, dear?"

"I sent another e-mail to Bush saying, 'You are a lipless wonder' and-"

"Oh, Tony, I can't believe you did that either!"

"Oh, no, I don't regret that!" the Prime Minister fumed. "No, not on your nelly. But of course-" he paused to swallow sheepishly "-he sent an e-mail back, didn't he? Threatened to push the button an hour early! So I apologised..."

Cherie almost cut her finger with a bread knife. "Well, you did the right thing," she said. "I don't think you should be winding him up like that. I think it was very nice of the Americans to give us a warning. Yes, very polite."

Tony snorted.

"Though it does make you wonder," she said, looking up at the wall. "What kind of message do you send a country you're about to obliterate? 'Oh, um, we're about to, well, wipe you off the face of the planet'?"

"Actually," said Tony, scratching his balls. "That's not far off the truth. Hang on a minute. I have the original e-mail here somewhere." He rooted around in the many pockets of his double breasted politician's suit from Saville Row. When he found the note, he uncrumpled it and read it out:

HI, BLAIR. EXPECT SOME I.C.B.M.S IN ABOUT THREE HOURS. WOULDN'T KEEP YOU WAITING, BUT I'M NOT THAT CONFIDENT ABOUT ALL THIS, SO NEED TO WATCH "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" AGAIN AND REMIND MYSELF HOW GREAT WE ARE.

ALL THE BEST, W.

P.S. THIS E-MAIL IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF GEORGE BUSH SNR., 192-SOMETHING - 2003 (THAT'LL TEACH YOU TO SEND AN OLD MAN A BOX OF PRETZELS!)

P.P.S. ALSO, IN LINE WITH THE PHOENETICISATION (THANKS FOR HELPING WITH THE SPELLING THERE, CONDOLEEZA; THAT'S OKAY, GEORGE) OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE, WE NOW SPELL IT NUCULAR. JUST THOUGHT YOU'D LIKE TO KNOW.

T.T.F.N.

"Oh, dear," said Mrs Blair. "That's quite condescending, isn't it?"

In the other room, three of the four Blair children were fighting over which D.V.D. to watch during dinner. Euan, being the biggest and strongest won that battle and chose "Pearl Harbor". Come nuclear annihilation he would be happily watching Kate Beckinsale fly off into the sunset with Ben Affleck after the glorious American victory over the Japanese at the Battle of Hawaii, December 7th 1941.

At least, that was the plan. Euan had an itch, the kind of itch that couldn't be relieved by scratching in the literal sense - the perennial itch of the teenage boy. Dad had forbidden him to tell anyone about the end of the world, and without an official announcement he knew prophecies of imminent Armageddon would not fly with potential aides in his deflowerment. He knew using World War III as a chat-up line would make him look desperate - he was desperate!

After Ben Affleck died the first time, his younger sister Kathryn lost interest and left the room. Halfway between the lounge and the kitchen he caught up with her. Euan Blair had an idea.

"Jack Straw slipped me a copy of this yesterday," Tony said to his wife.

The video was called 'Protect And Survive'. Initially it brought back fond memories for both of them - Euan had been conceived during one screening of it at their local C.N.D. club.

"I'd forgotten how kitsch it was," he muttered. "Apparently, when the bomb goes off, we must all hide under chairs with wet towels on our heads."

Cherie opened the oven door and took out her steaming tray of cookies. "Whoever said Ted Heath didn't have a sense of humour?" she said distantly.

"Bloody Tories," said Blair. "National survival on the cheap."

Just then, Kathryn ran into the kitchen squealing, with a stormy-faced Euan not far behind. Mrs Blair promptly dropped the cookies and began to cry. "I'll never eat another cookie," she bemoaned. "I don't have time to make anymore."

"What are the pair of you playing at?" snapped Tony. "Look at what you're doing to your mother!"

"Dad, like, tell me we can leave this freak behind," Kathryn said. "Tell me there's, like, not enough room on the chopper."

"Dad, don't listen to a thing she says!" Euan cried.

Tony sucked in his upper lip and there was silence. It was a nuance he usually reserved for Holocaust Memorial Day, royal funerals and other P.R. exercises. "It's the end of civilisation," he said, his speech characteristically staggered. "And you two are still bickering like the Shadow Cabinet..."

"She started it," Euan said.

"Go in the other room and set the table," Tony told them. It was the voice he used on the LibDems whenever he wanted their votes and it worked now too.

He bent down beside Cherie. She was busy sweeping the steaming cookie crumbs into a dustpan. "Leave it," he said. "It doesn't matter."

"I can't stand the mess," she sobbed.

"Think of it this way, in two hours, who will care?"

"The tabloids!"

"Who that actually matters?"

She looked up at him, then left the dustpan where it was. "Oh, Tony, what about all the normal people? How are they going to cope? They don't even know what's coming. You have to warn them!"

"And we will," he told her. "Alastair thinks we should delay it as long as possible, then blame it on eighteen years of Tory misrule of the emergency broadcasting system, or even better, Gordon Brown."

Cherie returned to her hob. The potatoes were boiling nicely. "I suppose it's for the best," she said. "They'd only be worrying about it too."

"Exactly!" said Tony, snaking an arm about her shoulders. "Hey, Alastair also thinks that when I do the address, I should try and sound like Winston Churchill. What do you think?"

Euan was standing over the toddler Leo. Kathryn had disappeared upstairs once she'd finished setting the table and his other brother Nicky remained enchanted with the movie. Ben Affleck was long dead and Kate Beckinsale had gone for a proverbial roll in the parachutes with Josh Hartnett. Euan's itch returned with a vengeance. He felt like going for a scratch upstairs but knew that would only make it worse.

Then Euan Blair had another idea.

"Nickyyyy," he said.

At T minus 1 hour 9 minutes, Tony Blair helped his wife carry the dinner into the dining room. Euan was watching the movie on his own now, Nicky having disappeared too. His parents assumed it was his impending death that made him look so gloomy. When she was ready to dish up, Cherie went to the bottom of the stairs to call for Euan's siblings.

"We're, like, not coming down!" cried Kathryn.

"Not whilst he's there!" Nicky added.

"I think the kids are blaming you for what's happening," Cherie whispered to her husband. Then she called up, "Don't blame Daddy. It's that nasty American President's fault."

"Not him!" wailed Kathryn.

"Euan!" cried Nicky.

Cherie was confused. She looked even more like a Pekinese when she was perplexed. "Why are they blaming Euan for World War III?" she wondered. "Go and find out."

So Tony trundled upstairs, was gone until T minus 59 minutes, then trundled back down again to explain into his wife's ear. She almost gagged. Euan looked up from his movie and gave them both the evils.

"Oh, don't worry, you two," she shouted. "I've just promised Euan that once we get to Chequers I'll be his first lay."

Nicky and Kathryn came downstairs after that, and Euan's itch was gone.

In a way, Tony Blair was glad to spend his final night at 10 Downing Street like this. He'd had nightmares for years about electoral defeat at the hands of one bald guy or another, most frighteningly when it had been Telly Savalas. Yet, as it was to turn out, he would be the only British Prime Minister never to be defeated. He sought solace in this success, so that when he and his family were climbing into the helicopter that would take them to a fallout shelter beneath Chequers, it didn't feel like he was running away.

NOTES:
Despite the apparent relevance of the context, and the fact that it was written in the 48 hours between Bush's ultimatum and the first strike on Iraq, this story wasn't actually a response to events in the Middle East. The story is more a response to something I read, that during the 1980s both America and Russia had this policy in which, if they were going to nuke the other, they would give them three hours warning. Very "Dr Strangelove", I thought. I envisaged Dubya as being a suitably ignorant Dr Evil-style baddie, waging war over a pretzel, though my main thrust with the story was always the libellous suggestion that Euan Blair wanted to shag his sister. The black humour is very much inspired by the graphic novel "When The Wind Blows", which is also about nuclear war.