Steal ’em

Hey, Greece! You want your marbles back? Steal ’em

Coming soon to a movie theater near you, The Great Elgin Marbles Caper.

BY PAUL DALLISON

What’s all the fuss about the Elgin Marbles? You can’t even play actual marbles with them!

The governments in Athens and London have spent the week sniping at each other over the Elgin Marbles — Greece of course would prefer that we call them Parthenon Sculptures, but that sounds a little too much like a mid-1970s prog rock band — after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak canceled a meeting with his counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a decision Athens dubbed “unprecedented” and “disrespectful.”

Anyway, if Greece really does want the marbles back, it’s going about it all wrong. Don’t rely on diplomacy, that never works (as a reminder, the EU’s top diplomat is Josep “Take foot, put foot squarely in mouth, speak” Borrell), just steal them!

I’m not sure that theft from the British Museum is even classed as a crime (POLITICO’s lawyers would like me to point out that theft of any kind is a crime and that my suggested defense for stealing from the British Museum — irony — has no basis in the law).

But it’s not as if theft from the British Museum hasn’t happened before. Back in September, the museum launched a website and email hotline requesting help that might lead to the recovery of 2,000 artifacts with a net value of millions of pounds believed to have been stolen from its collections. Police released a list of suspects in their hunt for the thefts: the entire world.

Alas, so far I have had no response from Hollywood bigwigs to my suggestion for the next blockbuster movie: The Great Elgin Marbles Caper, an homage to the wonderful Ealing comedies of the 1940s and 50s in which the prime minister of Greece (played by Joaquin Phoenix — I know he’s not Greek but he’s not French either and just played Napoleon), frustrated at his attempts to bring back the Elgin Marbles, gets a job as a security guard at the British Museum in an attempt to steal his country’s prized possession and return it to its rightful place, on the Acropolis. To be fair to the Brits in this whole saga, the British Museum is lovely and has nice places to eat such as the Great Court Restaurant, while the Parthenon needs some renovations. It doesn’t even have a roof!!!

But, and here’s the twist — this bit’s for you, the head of Paramount Pictures — the Greek PM makes a big mistake by discussing his plan with the clumsy, oafish owner of a local café (played by Boris Johnson — look, we can fine tune the casting later). He tips off the British authorities and the prime minister (Thandiwe Newton) orders a crack team to painstakingly create a replica of the Elgin Marbles for the Greeks to steal.

Then comes the next twist — back off, M. Night Shyamalan! — when the Brits discover the replica was so good that they accidentally gave the original to the Greeks and kept the fake version in London.

The ending’s not finished yet but it will either be everyone involved having a good old laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation, or there’s a massive war with loads of bloodshed!