The unreported thorn in Josef Stalin's Side

Not a lot of people know that Joseph Stalin had a sock puppet, few people know that, in stark contrast to his former owner, Josef Stalin Sock Puppet loves the global economy and capitalism in all its forms. Josef Stalin sock puppet lives in Washington D.C. and claims to be an unofficial World Trade Organisation delegate for the United States. I caught up with him in the local Mc Donald's for a chat and a milkshake.

"My upbringing was hard, I lived with Stalin during the time of the great industrialisation programme in the Soviet Union, I understand that he was trying to help his country, but what a moaner!" says Josef Stalin Sock Puppet over a chocolate milkshake, "He was always coming home to me and saying, 'oh Sock Puppet! What am I to do!, the five year plan isn't coming on properly, I keep having to work people to death!' What a moaning ninny!" 

Josef Stalin Sock Puppet: "Mmmmm, chocolate milkshake, my favourite!"

Soon the young Josef Stalin Sock Puppet grew restless. "Shortly after, I took it upon myself to leave in the baggage of Ra-ra-rasputin, who unbeknownst to most people stayed in Russia with Stalin until the late forties, when he moved to Germany and set the wheels in motion for seventies disco pop outfit Boney M." He moved to France, where he soon grew bored because he couldn't speak the language. "I moved to America, because I had heard great things about it, I got there, and, boy was I impressed" he says in his smooth transatlantic accent, acquired from years of living in the good old US of A, "Cars, Skyscrapers, it was amazing, if this was what we got in a society where the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, I wanted in!"

He managed to sneak into the C.I.A. and bumped into J. Edgar Hoover, who he struck up a great friendship with, "I gave away all the secrets that Stalin had told me, the secret entrance into Russia and the button that would overthrow communism and turn Russia and its satellite states into capitalist nations." All looked good for the young upstart who wanted so much to overthrow his former owner's regime. However, all was not well, "it turned out, that all the button did was give off a little bit of a light show and turn Red Square briefly into a small potato, Stalin had skimped on the materials and invested in cheap, shoddy materials, still, it was a brief spectacle which, surprisingly didn't make the news."

However, this brief spectacle catapulted Josef Stalin Sock Puppet through the ranks of the C.I.A., where, ironically, J. Edgar Hoover became his puppet, "it was thought that having a sock puppet in charge of national security was a bit silly, so instead they put a bigoted sexual deviant as the head and I merely told him what to do."

But soon, being head of the C.I.A. became boring and after drifting from job to job, he finally settled as a WTO delegate, "It's great" he says "I get to boss other, poorer countries around and no-one can stop me!" Josef Stalin Sock Puppet seems happy with his life as a capitalist pig dog, as his owner would probably put it and, I think, although his owner would be extremely angry with him, I think that, secretly he would have felt a little proud that his sock puppet had become almost as big a tyrant as him.

Reporter: Keith Waterhouse Sock Puppet