Melanoma and bran

While most cancers seem to have an environmental cause that is diminished by rising on the social scale, melanoma becomes commoner the more upper class you are. The role of ultra violet rays is well established and the upper classes take more foreign holidays. The blame is put on hair spray and oven cleaner. It is supposed that their fluorocarbon propellants have punched a hole in the ozone layer at the South Pole, which has allowed the UV to seep through.

Now, I think this is all Baloney. For a start there’s not much melanoma in Antarctica, and for another hair spray has been around much longer than the hole in the ozone. Remember those bouffant hairstyles of the fifties? That was when hair spray was at its zenith.

The social phenomenon that correlates best with the loss of the ozone is bran. I tried it once. Not only do you almost choke trying to swallow the vile little particles, you certainly choke if you stand down wind of anyone on the stuff. Methane is the link. Vegetarians chewing on cabbage, artichokes and endives, but most of all on bran, are producing millions of litres of methane. Until the vegetarians came along the chief methane producers were the termites chewing down the trees in the tropical rain forest, but thank goodness someone has had the wisdom to chop the wretched trees down and deny the termites their feast.

If you remember your chemistry, the formula for methane is CH4. What that carbon and hydrogen cry out for is oxygen. They are trying to become carbon dioxide and water. And where do they get their oxygen from? That’s right, the ozone layer. After all why make do with O2 when you can get hold of O3?

All those open-toed-sandled, hairy, corduroyed, lib-dem-voting, bran-eating vegetarians are sucking the ozone out of the atmosphere and giving the rest of us melanoma.

I have proof of this. Before we even knew that ozone had a layer, the only place you found it was at the seaside. Of course, the pundits told us that it wasn’t ozone we could smell but rotting seaweed. The truth is it was both. The methane produced by the decaying seaweed drew in the ozone for the benefit of the bathers. But this inordinate and unnatural consumption of vegetables has thrown the environment into a fearful imbalance. It’s time to act. Ban bran now.