Years ago, I did some occasional work updating mailing lists on behalf of the council. It was pretty dumb stuff, checking addresses and names and things of that nature. Only, every now and then you’d have the opportunity to play. Someone would write in indignantly asking why their CBE hadn’t been included in their details, clearly needing affirmation of their status even on junk mail about local arts events; and I’d duly ensure that the letters CSE would follow their name. Equally, people with cool names would arbitrarily be awarded knighthoods etc, just because. It was irresponsible and unaccountable, and a whole lot of fun for a minimum wage gig.

Looked at another way, that was another example of me being a prankster, and it’s that spirit that drives The Yes Men, whose work in ‘identity correction’ is chronicled in a documentary feature. I watched with fascination, partly because I’ve got a concept for a documentary bubbling away, also because I’m interested in the overlap between reality and fiction, a space that The Yes Men explore for fun and not-for-profit.

Their targets are various, pretty much stemming from a generic leftist perspective about globalisation. But where the conventional left is joyless, The Yes Men are clowns and satirists. Which brings us back to the notion of ‘identity correction’: the Yes Men set up websites that could easily be mistaken for those of bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, and as a result end up with invitations to participate in various global fora.

They duly attend, making monstrous pronouncements about the return of slavery or the utility of recycling human waste into food, and their hugely exaggerated right wing rhetoric is rarely rumbled by the people they share panel time with. Even when addressing a forum on the future of fabrics dressed in a shiny gold exercise suit with a three foot inflatable techno-phallus containing a screen to monitor workers, thus allowing managers to spend their leisure time more productively, they’re pretty much granted the solemnity you’d expect of apparent representatives of the WTO.

I found the whole film hugely inspiring — the Yes Men themselves come across as amiably amused rather than zealots with an answer for everything, and their stance seems a thoroughly reasonable one to take. The film gave me plenty of inspiration for my own documentary concept, and I’m wondering how it may shape a drama I’m contemplating that may well have a satirical element.

There’s a breed of commentator I come across from time to time who wonder what the point of Media Studies is, and what will happen to all the young people who take it up as a degree. I can understand that concern to a point, but one aspect of The Yes Men is that it shows what a gang of media-savvy collaborators can do when they put their minds to it. The same spirit is part of what made The KLF so special, and I’d like to think I could create work that sits alongside their output for combining popularity, intelligence, and sheer what-the-fuck quality.