Quiet Man 1954-2007

Quiet Man (aka Iain Duncan Smith), the superhero from another planet empowered with the ability to roar more quietly than the hoarsest bat, lead more ineptly than the worst John Major and bore potential voters with a single word, who led the Conservative Party from 2001 to 2003, has passed away following the publication of the Conservatives' Social Justice Policy Group report into the UK’s “broken society”.

Born in 1954 on the planet Shh!, Quiet Man was the son of Dreadful Sy-Lenns and Awful Kwy-Ett, keepers of the planetary library. Facing the destruction of all they held dear by an invasion from the planet BluddyLowd, the pair placed their son in a - very quiet - spacecraft and sent him on the long and silent journey through space to Earth, where they felt his quiet voice and incredibly stiff demeanour could make a difference to the fate of humanity.

Quiet Man was discovered in a small field outside the rural farming town of Edinburgh, Scotland by a simple highly-decorated RAF Group Captain and his simple ballerina wife, who chose to bring up the boy they would name Iain Duncan Smith⁽¹⁾ as their own.

From the beginning it was clear that young Quiet Man was different. Schooled in a naval academy on the Isle of Anglesey he was marked out from the moment the teacher called the register and mistook his answer for the flapping of the wings of a passing moth. A career in the army followed, Quiet Man spending hour after hour not barking orders at NCOs, before he entered the world of business, mostly as the silent partner in a mime agency.

During all these years Quiet Man bided his time, quietly, knowing that one day "the call" would come. That day came in 1992, when the grateful people of Chingford, tired of their former MP Norman Tebbit's habit of grabbing them by the lapels and shouting at them endlessly about how the country was going to "the dogs, the Eurocrats and the namby-pamby-pinko-crypto-communist-lesbian-muesli-munchers", chose to elect Quiet Man as his successor.

Keen to disguise his mighty powers, Quiet Man passed his time in Parliament gazing silently (bar the odd cough) but strongly at the Government benches on the other side of the Commons chamber, or being mistaken for an usher. Nonetheless, he knew the country's hour of need was coming and, when William Hague resigned as Conservative leader in 2001, he chose to throw his name into the hat, mainly because no-one could hear him when he spoke his name out loud.

So it was that Quiet Man at last found his place among the band of heroes that was the Tory Party of Great Britain. Alongside such mighty figures as Nicholas "The Blob" Soames and Michael "The Fang" Howard he took on villains from Tony Blair ("The Smiler"), to Gordon "Iron Man" Brown and John "Twelve Pies" Prescott.

Yet despite his bravery and courage, Quiet Man was to be defeated by a kryptonite-like substance made up of a lethal combination of his own inability to stir up enough passion among his supporters to elicit a luke-warm round of applause and the tendency of Conservative MPs to act as if they were applying for the post of first assistant to Niccolo Macchiavelli

Almost fatally weakened Quiet Man crawled - very quietly - away to his Fortress of Quietude, where he established his awesome Centre for Social Justice think tank. However, there was one last battle to fight: in his hour of greatest policy need, the new leader of the Conservative Superheroes, David Cameron ("Green Man"), called on his predecessor to defeat the forces of social breakdown. Quiet Man had no choice but to answer, turning up the volume at last in a 1000 decibel (and £6 billion) vocal blast of policy initiatives, tax breaks and benefit increases for married couples. And so Quiet Man passed away, replaced by Fairly Audible Man with a Bit of a Cough and a Thing for Married Couples.

Quiet Man will be buried at St Marcel’ Marceau's Church of the Man Trapped in a Glass Box. The service will be signed for the hard of speaking and the congregation will silently mouth hymn No. 453 The Sound of Silence.

⁽¹⁾ Thus failing miserably to comply with The Superhero Alter Ego (Alliterative Naming) Regulations of 1952.