THIS week we have been hit by the brain-pummelling news that the mightiest armed forces in the world (ours) are to cooperate and share stuff with definitely not the mightiest armed forces in the world (France).
As I look at the facts now, through the haze of a four-day drink-it-to-forget-it bender, I still don't believe it.
After all, while times were tight under New Labour (who seemed to want to scrap with anyone who so much as looked at Tony Blair's wife - and let's be honest, no one did if they could help it) our Boys and Girls were able to make a little go a long way.
Their boots might have been melting in the heat but still the Army marched on. The RAF dominated the skies with their four jets and six working helicopters (five actually flying, one up on bricks for spares) which, for my money, is taking the idea of The Few a bit literally.
The Navy patrolled the seas in some of the mightiest dinghies the world has ever seen. The message was 'Give us some of the kit but maybe not all of it and we can do it'.
But now the Coalition have got in, things have taken a bonkers turn.
Don't get me wrong, I understand cuts have to be made, but our reputation is such that they shouldn't matter.
Which other country could have an aircraft carrier without aircraft? The enemy would see that and panic. 'Wow, they're so good they don't even need the planes' is what the Argies might say. Our submarines can be parked on a beach for all to see as if to say, 'Look, we're this confident, we don't need to hide underwater'.
But the Coalition have gone merger mad - and just as Nick Clegg as deputy dawg was unthinkable before May, so the prospect of Anglo-French military cooperation was beyond belief. But it's happened.
I suppose this is one time we should be grateful they don't teach history properly in schools any more, because for those of us who know any it's going to need a complete rewrite.
History is written by the winners: French history books are blank from cover to cover.
But, it can be argued, history all depends on how you look at things.
The Hundred Years' War was actually a prolonged training exercise. Agincourt was an archery practice session that the French army tragically blundered into, one of the worst friendly fire incidents of the Middle Ages.
The Battle Of Waterloo was the decider in a glorified railway station naming competition. The Battle Of Trafalgar wasn't a battle at all, it was radical downsizing in preparation for a merger.
When the French armies collapsed in 1940 they were simply suckering the Germans into thinking they had won World War Two, and handing over to us, the experts. The French not turning up for Iraq was a subtle hint that it might be a bad idea.
But there is another way of looking at it - finally, after a millennium of struggle, the French work for us now. We're the Daddy, Britannia rules les vagues.
And at least it's not the Germans - not sure how I'd explain that one away.
Article from 'The publandlord' Al Murray in The Sun newspaper 5/11/10
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