It's the satirists you've got to feel sorry for.
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There they are, beavering away, crafting more and more surreal scenarios - and then the British politicians outdo them in absurdity.
We learn from the British Daily Telegraph, for example, that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering sending a request to the European Union for a delay to Britain's departure from the EU - but accompanied by a letter saying he doesn't want a delay.
It's like sending a letter with a covering note saying, "Please ignore the letter!" - "Dear Angela, I'm filing for divorce but here's a note saying I'm not!"
At this time of national crisis, the Westminster Parliament has been suspended. There will be no debate for a month on the biggest issue facing the country since the war.
This all comes after Mr Johnson's Conservative government lost its majority in the House of Commons when he expelled 21 centrist Conservative MPs, including two former finance ministers and the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill. Some saw the suspension as an anti-democratic ruse.
Even Mr Johnson's own brother, Jo, resigned, adding an element of Shakespearean brother-against-brother tragedy to the farce.
According to The Sun, Jo Johnson's wife said: "It's me or him." With the Murdoch paper's genius for wit if not impartiality, its headline was "Ditch Bo Jo or I go-go".
Ditch Bo Jo or I go-go
- The Sun
The grand expulsions made Mr Johnson a prime minister without a majority, a "zombie government" as it was termed.
Some bright spark had an absurdist solution: the government would propose a vote of confidence in itself hoping it would lose and so force a general election.
The government wants an election because it thinks it could win on a "people versus parliament" platform.
The Labour opposition doesn't want an election, perhaps because it thinks it wouldn't win - a thought which prompted the Tory papers to paint Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn as a chicken. Journalists in parliament were sent boxes of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
To be fair to Labour, its reluctance to go for an election may be because it agrees with Napoleon: "Never interfere with an enemy while he's in the process of destroying himself." American President Woodrow Wilson put it more bluntly: "Never murder a man who is committing suicide."
A satirist could get lost in all this. So could a psychiatrist trying to understand the mental breakdown of a nation.
Boris Johnson's strong card is the clock, ticking away towards an unagreed divorce from the European Union on October 31.
His other strong card may be Jeremy Corbyn, the ultra left leader of a Labour Party mired in allegations of anti-semitism - Mr Corbyn failed to condemn a mural showing hook nosed financiers playing Monopoly on a board laid on the backs of the workers.
He also laid a wreath in a cemetery containing the remains of terrorists behind the torture and murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Mr Corbyn is advised by, among others, Andrew Murray (or Andrew Philip Drummond-Murray as he was before he renounced his aristocratic background to embrace Marxism-Leninism).
Are British voters ready for his brand of socialism or would they stick with the current chaos?
Mr Johnson has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask the EU for an extension to Brexit negotiations.
He could resign - but who would replace him as prime minister?
Some sort of centrist figure - Tory grandee Kenneth Clarke is often mentioned? It's a nice, romantic idea that one of the most indisputably likable figures in British politics finally gets the job he was so suited for in his hay day but Labour is unlikely to accept him.
Jeremy Corbyn? Nobody outside Labour is likely to accept him, either.
Nobody quite knows what Labour wants to do - probably not even Labour. Nobody quite knows what Mr Johnson will do - probably not even him.
Nobody knows what the people actually want. They voted narrowly for divorce but didn't specify the terms - who gets what or the future relationship.
Given some Australian affection for Britain, you might think a tragedy is unfolding.
Or a farce. Pity the parodists.
And the British people.
Steve Evans is British. He covered British politics in a less surreal era.