Great figures in history-Alexander the great

In our continuing series exploring the great figures in history, our spotlight of truth has now fallen upon the heroic figure of Alexander of Macedon.
The charismatic conqueror of the known world and supreme figurehead of the Christian church for the last six thousand years.

There are many stories concerning the birth of Alexander, some say he was born in a stable and attended by three of the four Marx brothers (Zeppo being unavailable at the time due to a bout of Malaria) others that he was born into a family of traveling gynecologists in the famous port city of Hullopolis, which at that time was capital of the mighty Persian empire.

But these accounts, although containing some grains of truth, fail to take into consideration the well attested fact that the young man in question was actually born in Macedon, which happens to be a small village half way between Hullopolis and Leeds in the glorious picturesque shire now known as Yorkshire.
At the time of Alexander's birth the small village of Macedon had somehow managed to unite the perpetually warring Greek city states into a single unified state. This incredible feat was managed by Alexander's father, king Philip the blind of Macedon.
When we now look back on Phillip's achievement it is with a sense of awe, that this blind Yorkshire postman was able, without ever setting foot in Greece, to unite such implacable enemies into a single union.
It says much for the man that although blind from birth he had the incredible foresight to forge a nation that to this very day sits at the epicenter of global politics and still dominates the incredibly lucrative trade in kebabs.

It was into this nascent dynasty that the twelve year old Alexander was born, it was said that on the night of his birth every kebab shop in Yorkshire went unaccountably quiet and there was not a single arrest for drunken or violent conduct in the whole of the kingdom.
Whether this tale is apocryphal or not its hard to judge, but we can be sure his birth was a very important event for the front page of the Sun 'newspaper' that day carried the headline "Blind king Phil don't fire blanks!"

So from the very beginning it was clear that Alexander was very special, not in a special needs kind of way, but in a special special kind of way, in the way that Carlsberg special brew is special but the special Olympics isn't.
From the moment he was born fully formed at the age twelve the gods seemed to have reserved a place amongst themselves for this special special boy, by the age of thirteen he could speak six hundred and twelve languages, tie his own shoe laces and had made his first million by selling brightly colored sheep on the internet.
But all this learning and business success was not enough for the young Alexander and by time he had reached his fourteenth birthday he had murdered his blind father, slept with his fat mother and consolidated his iron grip on his Greek vassal states.
Now safe in the knowledge that his grip on the country was secure and the money was rolling in from his now worldwide chain of kebab shops, Alexander turned his avaricious eyes east towards the greatest empire the world had ever seen, Persia!

The Persian empire was at this time so vast that people said if a man walked for three quarters of an hour he would still only be half way across it.
The ruler of this vast empire, sitting on the east Yorkshire coast, was Darius, king of kings, son of heaven and ruler of the earth, such was Darius's earthly power that from birth he had never walked a single step in his whole life. A priestly cast had developed under his late father devoted to carrying the reigning monarch around, these were called 'Baggies' and is where we derive the term 'carrier bag' from.
Darius, like Alexander, was intellectually brilliant he had written four and a half novels (all self published) and was at that time waiting to hear from his agent to see if his sitcom, 'Oh no I'm a Persian!' was going to be picked up by NBC.

How much the history of the world would have changed if NBC had picked up Darius's sitcom we can only guess, but suffice to say it was Seinfeld that went on to rule the world of comedy and it was Darius that faded from the pages of history like something that fades a lot, maybe a cheap T shirt or fader on a sound mixer. We just don't know.

While Darius had been preoccupied with selling his script, Alexander had been busy amassing his forces at the Persian border, his chief commander Richard 'the dick' Cheney longtime advocate of the Persian adventure had cleverly disguised his six million troops as natural features, rocks, trees and grains of sand, all along the one and a half mile Persian border.
Now all that was needed was an excuse for invasion and it was to be Cheney the master of war who was to provide Alexander with his casus belli, he told Alexander that he had heard Darius say that if his sitcom wasn't picked up he would have to go to his plan b and open up a chain of falafel shops. Which he knew would pitch him head to head with Alexander in the post pub fast food market.
When Alexander heard this he was said to have flown into one of his famous rages and locked himself into his bedroom for six days only venturing out at mealtimes and then refusing to talk to anyone.
So the course was set for a collision of empires, a battle of ideals, on one side the delightful chilli sauce, lamb and pitta of Alexander on the other the dark and terrible concoction of Darius known to men as Falafel.

The morning of the battle saw the two great armies face each other across the vast desert of the north Yorkshire moors, Alexander's six million men were said to have visibly trembled when the one hundred and sixty million heavily armed men of Darius marched into view and began to shout obscenities about the origins of Alexander's kebab meat. Alexander, worried his men would crumble beneath this torrent of abuse was said to have rode along the line on his famous white charger, Gary, assuring the men in his command that only the best cuts of lamb were used in his kebabs.

As the sun began to set on that fateful day and Alexander surveyed the one hundred and sixty million Persian dead and realised he had finally achieved his dream and was now ruler of the whole earth and the undisputed kebab lord of the universe, a single tear was said to fallen from his crooked left eye.
For the loss of just three men the fifteen year old Alexander had conquered the greatest empire the world had ever seen, and as he and his men rode into Darius's defeated capital, Hullopolis, it was said that hordes of angels descended from the heavens and sang Alexander's favourite song, Wham's marvelous 'Last Christmas'

But Alexander's great triumph was to be a short lived affair for two and a half hours after entering the defeated city, the boy king and god on earth was dead.
There are many different versions of the death of Alexander, some say he died of gout, others that the gods had finally become jealous and taken his life as punishment for daring to put himself above them.
The plain truth of the matter was Alexander was killed crossing the road by a fish cart on its way to market. the driver had been drinking, talking on a mobile phone and smoking a cigarette at the time. (He was later sentenced to three months community service and a twenty five pound fine for careless driving.)
For the boy who had conquered the known world at fifteen to be killed in so tragic and mundane a fashion only adds to the mystique and legend that is was and always shall be, Alexander the great!