Established 2005 Registered Charity No. 1110656

Scottish Charity Register No. SC043760

current issue

February – March 2026 : Progress READ ONLINE

RECENT TWEETS

Prince Philip: UFO hunter

May 01 2025

Another O’Haggis misadventure of royal intrigue. From the mind of Chris Sampson, who doesn’t expect a knighthood anytime soon


Catch-up

  • O’Haggis is a time-travelling sleuth working for the Chronology Preservation™ Agency, an organisation tasked with tidying up time anomalies
  • Previous issues of the magazine have printed such whacky O’Haggis missions as the time he chased Adam Ant’s nose stripe, a stay in prison and numerous altercations with toffs from times past.


There had been a D-Notice on the story since 1959. “Not to be opened until 2059” read the yellowing file, “Bottom Secret”.

O’Haggis cast his gaze over the dossier. D-Notice? Meaning: Desist. Or else! he thought, in italics.

Of course, there was a way around the order if you worked for the Chronology Preservation™ Agency. And so our time-travelling hero nipped into the future, to avoid violating the Official Secret’s Act. Now in 2059, the dossier could be legally opened. He took it into a quiet corner and began to read its contents.

It featured a newspaper report from 1959: “Arts Project Must Be Renamed, Clergy Insist” ran the headline from the Plumshire and Thereabouts Gazette. It went on to explain that: “A local arts project planned for sacred spaces has been forced to change its name, as its original title, Youth Art In Churches, has been deemed to be sacrilegious by the local Archbishop; and by others to be a practical joke by a mischievous, flatulence-obsessed local man, Thomas McWilliams.”

O’Haggis couldn’t see anything to warrant prohibiting the story for a century. Until the last line: “McWilliams, a Throdger from Cuckleshott Village, has been summoned to Buckingham Palace to discuss the matter with HRH Prince Philip.”

Ah! Now O’Haggis understood the D-Notice: He knew from his travels to the future that despite sounding like an old-fashioned profession Throdging was, or would be, a skill lost to humanity by the mid-22nd Century. And since it wouldn’t even be invented until 2054, Mr McWilliams had no business being employed as one in 1959.

The late Prince Philip’s involvement was easier to figure out: after the Roswell Incident of 1947, when a UFO allegedly crashed in New Mexico, USA, Philip had developed a keen interest in the subject. He was kept abreast of British UFO cases, with several witnesses invited to Buck House to tell what they’d seen and share photo evidence.

McWilliams was one such, it transpired; the Church arts story an obvious smokescreen, harnessing the prudishness of the 1950s to divert attention. So, O’Haggis thought in italics, McWilliams had seen a UFO, had he? Hmm.

The file also contained a report by the Prince’s enigmatic equerry, Montmorency ‘Monty’ Critchley, who evidently enforced the secrecy surrounding the controversial subject. Noting that the topic of UFOs was also of interest to another royal, Louis Mountbatten, Critchley had drawn up a plan to deflect attention from his regal masters. The equerry had suggested that the naturally kind-hearted, altruistic Prince Philip should develop an intolerant, rude persona, sprinkling xenophobic remarks into his interviews and being dismissive of commoners.

Naturally, HRH had protested, but eventually saw that making borderline racist comments to embarrass his wife [the now late Queen Elizabeth II], and pretending to be a boorish, arrogant, bullying type was the perfect cover. It would keep the tabloids busy, while behind closed palace doors, he and Mountbatten could continue their studies into the paranormal, UFOlogy and so on.

With a jolt, O’Haggis realised from further reading of the dossier that Thomas McWilliams’ own account of a supposed encounter with otherworldly beings in his village in 1959 was what had led the so-called Throdger to learn the term. McWilliams claimed he had actually met with a time-traveller from O’Haggis’ own Chronology Preservation™ Agency.

Furthermore, to judge from his description of the ‘alien’, McWilliams had stumbled upon none other than… O’Haggis himself! It seems I’m to be sent on a mission to 1959 at some point, he italicised, and I’ll evidently be carrying this report with me, which would explain the Throdging reference!

Yes, he had the dossier already. Bloody Nora! McWilliams could have only learnt of Throdging from his future, and, assuming it to be an extraterrestrial pastime, had concluded that O’Haggis was a bug-eyed fiend from beyond the stars. Absurd of course, he was actually the love child of Malcolm X and Mary Queen of Scots, which is obviously much more plausible. Ahem!

But could O’Haggis close the time-loop and get on with his usual daft adventures? He swiftly nipped back to 1959, to the day before the original encounter and minus any Throdging info, and, disguised as a 1950s toff, soon tracked down McWilliams to Cuckleshott Village.

With the forelock-tugging deference of his era and class, the latter accepted a shiny farthing from an insistent Lord O’Haggis without question and, being a filthy prole, obviously could think of nothing better to do with it than get pissed in the Crooked Billet, his local pub.

Thus, he had a hangover the next day, and didn’t meet O’Haggis, as in the original history, nor learn of Throdging, nor assume he’d seen aliens. So, having nothing to report, Prince Philip would never hear of the case and would never invite McWilliams to Buckingham Palace. And so the temporal paradox was avoided. All thanks to the British Class System. Oh, and time travel.

Phew! Italicised O’Haggis! Another pointless mystery resolved by preventing it in the first place!

As for Prince Philip, in public he continued to epitomise everything wrong with Royalty, embarrassing the Queen with bigoted outbursts and showing an ostensible coldness toward their son, Charles, who of course now bears the title C 3 P O [Charles 3rd Palace Overlord], or ‘King’, if you prefer.

Among the monarch’s regal duties is the granting of knighthoods and other honours, so he is now the one denying any such accolade to scribblers of absurd sci-fi nonsense, especially those who insinuate anything iffy about the Royal Family, alas!

Anyhoo. With Philip’s secret identity as a UFO hunter preserved, none outside the Chronology Preservation™ Agency would ever know of his and Mountbatten’s noble sacrifices as they covertly fought battles with sausage-faced beings from alien planets, bent on conquering the Earth.

*

By order of C 3 P O, this chronicle must end with a full rendition of God Save The King, and certainly, absolutely not the Sex Pistols’ version of God Save The Queen.

*

Note: So, what is Throdging, then, I hear you ask? Ah! You’ll have to wait until 2054 to find out, my friends. And, to be honest, much like the next effort by your humble scribe, it won’t really be worth waiting for.

*

THE END

P.S. Prince Philip and Louis Mountbatten were genuinely interested in UFO cases and did apparently invite alleged witnesses to Royal palaces to discuss what they claimed to have seen. See? This guff is researched, and not the absurd drivel it often appears to be. Ahem!

< Room for growth News in Brief 156 : June – July 2025 >
February – March 2026 : Progress

CONTENTS

BACK ISSUES
BACK TO PAGE TOP