While neither the Professor nor myself would enjoy the reputation of something so preposterous as a “conspiracy theorist”, we were intrigued recently to find ourselves skirting the perimeter of that strange and paranoid mindset, during the discussion of a topic that has long been a source of interest to us. The conclusion we reached was alarming and, apparently, inescapable; that there is some inscrutable arm of State authority out there which is involved in an insidious and widespread culling operation. An operation designed, we think, to raise the intelligence profile across the population.

In the days following our chat, we each made a few calls and braced what sources we have at our disposal in an effort to obtain some confirmation of our theory. You’ll hardly be surprised to learn that the freeze-out surrounding this delicate matter is, as it would have to be, complete, and that we turned up no direct evidence. “Although,” the Professor said, “it goes some way towards demonstrating that these bozos can do something properly when it suits them.”

We were left then with only our observations in the field and our deductions, which we further discussed and built upon. Eventually we determined that, at regular intervals, small sections of the population are being isolated at a secret location and subjected to intelligence testing. Those candidates scoring in and around what the Professor terms “the cretin mark” are being presented with complimentary bicycles before being sent out onto the busy streets.

“The fact of widespread cretinism among cyclists must now become obvious to the most bovine of observers,” the Professor e-mailed me later that same week. “The headgear for one thing is a dead give-away. Notwithstanding issues of elegance and style - though I’m sure someone could make something compelling from them - who but a card-carrying crackbrain would believe he’d be better off in a collision as a result of wearing such candy-coated millinery? In the event of an accident on the bustling highways, all the helmet would achieve is to delay the inevitable and put the unfortunate wearer in the position of helping clog up another hospital corridor, while his family agonises over when, rather than whether, to pull the plug.

“Of course they don’t all sport the chapeaux, so we have to select for pinheadedness using other criteria. In this country it’d be too much to expect of even the typically perspicacious citizen that he exercise some small degree of civic responsibility in obtaining or retaining an iota of knowledge concerning the by-laws forbidding cycling, or indeed the walking of bicycles, on the pavements. But you might expect that he would at least take account of the howls of pain from pedal-gouged pedestrians as he pushes through the thronged streets, and that he would be considerate enough to place his conveyance on the road in future. The complete absence of this trend of consideration, I fear, points again to cretinism. It must do, because the alternative is too depressing to contemplate.”

A more immediate indicator, we agreed, was the matter of traffic lights. I don’t know about you, reader, but we covered all three colours in primary school, and at the expense of blowing my own intellectual trumpet, it wasn’t that tough. “To the half-wit on his bicycle,” says the Professor, “they are but decorative baubles to brighten his merry way, and he tends to proceed through them with all the freedom from care of a motorist displaying hazard lights.” We found that the statistics when considered are frightening. If you allow that the time these signals spend at amber is only ever fleeting, and in any case amber is treated no differently to green, then you can see that at junctions our “doomed dullards” are half the time pedalling toward grisly death; or, if they’ve taken appropriate safety measures, toward the trolley in the corridor and the inevitable yanking of the plug.

The deeper the Professor and I dug into experience and observation, the more the evidence seemed to pile up. “What normally oxygenated brain would force its body to cycle the wrong way up a one way street, or from that position attempt to make a left turn that, as far as pedestrian and motorist alike are concerned, doesn’t actually exist and therefore isn’t worth considering? Who but a born fool would cycle up the inside of a vehicle that is indicating to turn left, or would seek to avoid a busy crossroads by allowing himself drift onto the wrong side of the road to make his right turn?”

We convened in the snug at the regular to mull further over the reasons behind this apparent desire for a more intelligent population, but felt at last that we failed to deliver a satisfactory solution. “Maybe so that going forward,” the Professor said sourly, “citizens can better understand why despite all the evidence the Government would embark upon policies of privatisation.” We were agreed that logistically the bicycle cull must be an enormous operation, wherein the population is monitored for the presence of “potential galoots”, who, once identified, are carefully observed, evaluated and, in time, coaxed along to the test centre. It seemed a fair surmise that, once isolated, the candidates are screened prior to testing, probably by means of a simple questionnaire. By the time I was leaving the pub, the Professor had recruited a couple of conspirators and was furiously entertaining all sorts of possibilities. “It’s clear to me,” he was saying, “that those candidates responding affirmatively to questions concerning sexual activity and who later hit the low tide mark on the savvy spectrum are in far greater danger than the celibate fool. That’s to say, those cretins found to present a clear and present danger to the intelligence profile by active insemination of the populace with their sub-standard genetics are, due to the urgency of the situation, issued not with mere push bikes but with their more lethal motorised counterpart.”