Conspiracy series

The fatuous nature of the opinion you’ve just been instructed to think about, leaves you with only two viable options: first, to walk away shaking your head in disbelief or, secondly, to cuff the offender merrily about his ears until he promises to never talk such twaddle again. I suggest you opt for the former although the latter would be a lot more fun.

It comes as no surprise then that a chap called James Middleton - who claims vehemently that sun cream is bad for you - began one of his latest social media publications with ‘Think about it for a minute.’ This raised hopes of a truly ridiculous following sentence. He didn’t disappoint. ‘They (pharmaceutical companies and health authorities) need you to believe that the sun is bad.’

Even by internet conspiracy theory standards this was heady stuff. The thing is, though, there’s a whole raft of eminently unqualified people (Mr. Middleton is a personal trainer with a quarter of a million followers on TwitFace or somewhere - I swear, you couldn’t make this up) who are currently advocating that we all adopt an anti-sunscreen stance and refuse to wear the pesky stuff while we lie, like beached whales, beneath a burning ball of fire hell bent on stripping the skin from our backs. Crumbs, you might even be lucky enough to meet one of these chaps by the pool this summer.

“Sunscreen? Not me mate. I’ll take my chances with Mother Nature, thank you very much.”

“Er, ok. But those blisters look terribly painful.”

“Nature’s way of cooling the skin, mate. Think about it. Pass the morphine, would you?”

One of these days I’m just going to make up the most absurd claim I possibly can and see if I can get a) followed by 250,000 people and b) the message to go viral.

In fact, let’s start right here. They (governments and multinational bed manufacturers) need you to believe that your body and mind require eight hours sleep per night, when, in fact, twenty three minutes is more than enough. They propagate this misinformation because the more we sleep, the more often we need to replace our beds, giving the fat cat manufacturers a steady income stream while simultaneously swelling government coffers with the corresponding mattress taxes. Think about it.