Go straight to hell… do not pass go…

The quintessential feature of “find out how the board game was invented” educational dramatisations, the likes of which you’d see on bundles of kids shows; we first encountered it on the Jeremy Beadle-helmed Eureka¹, a Beeb show where real people re-enacted the origins of inventions over a bleached-out background limbo of white Chromakey². Similarly, Monopoly’s appeal lay largely in the 3D renderings of houses, hotels and beautiful pewter playing pieces set against a flat board of Old London Town, Pennsylvania, or wherever.

‘Cos it certainly didn’t lay in the playing of the bloody game, the length of which was on average anything between one and three hours – or so it seemed to a youngster for whom time is most precious (and who inevitably got knocked out early on). Never mind “supertax”, entire currencies could rise and fall during a marathon session of Monopoly. There is a family in Birmingham who are rumoured to have started their current game on the Boxing Day before decimalisation. Rather like Risk and Game Of Life, Monopoly was in that bracket of board game where the players’ enthusiasm waned long before the declaration of an official winner.

Not that it matters but Monopoly’s arcane rules were rarely followed in any case. (Really, did anyone ever auction a property instead of buying it?) What kind of lessons was it trying to teach us? That life is basically just a case of plodding around in circles, with the odd highlight here and there? That beauty contests could be a primary source of income? What a Community Chest looked like? We still don’t know³.

But this perennial pro-capitalist pastime lives on in an ever-expanding version sprawl (including “gay”, “Star Wars” and “Wales-Cymru” flavours). Nowadays you can even order a personalised, custom-built edition from Hasbro (for a fee), containing locations you specify yourself (favourite pubs, the place you lost your virginity, that sort of thing). We’re tempted to write in for one with alternative rules that demand the establishment of an artistic commune on Whitechapel which trades in organic wheat, hemp and class C drugs. Except they tried that in Cuba and Castro burned the lot. Fact.