It's a truly scary thought. After several false starts and not a little angst, geneticists in the US recently managed to clone a monkey. And if that doesn't scare you, then it flipping well should. You know what that means, don't you?

Yes that's right. Monkeys are primates - apes - and so are we. So before you can say orangutang, it'll be us next. Oh I know the geneticists are swearing it'll never happen - on ethical grounds - but believe me, if some wide-boy geneticist thinks he can make a fast buck by replicating humans, he or she will do it and take the money.

For my part, it might be quite nice to have a production line of Jennifer Lopez or Halle Berry clones, but have you ever thought about cloning yourself? That's the scary part, and I don't think we'll go there. But it did lead me on to thinking about some well-known local people and what it would be like to clone them.

And before I go any further, just in case this human cloning thing becomes popular, all medical staff concerned with the process should sign a binding declaration prohibiting the cloning of politicians of all political colours.

What we really need to focus on is what I'd call 'useful cloning'. In other words, replicating people who can be of greater benefit to the community.

And it is to this end that I am proposing that as soon as the process becomes popular, the first people we Maltese should clone ought to be Celine Dion and/or Enrique Iglesias.

Oh why? I hear you cry. I'll tell you.

The most important single objective of we Maltese, yes even more important than seeing all our children graduate as lawyers is, wait for it, winning the Eurovision Song Contest. And - since we're obviously not going to do it with our crop of indigenous warblers, we'll simply get a clone of Celine or Enrique to do the business.

Take Ms Dion. In the first place we'd have to make sure her clone got Maltese citizenship, then we'd give her a suitable Maltese name like, Gracie Borg - or perhaps not Gracie Borg, but you get the picture.

Then all we'd have to do is find a suitably over-dramatic song, with lots of the flowery vibrato she hogs so well. It may even be an idea - if funds permit - to clone a decent international songwriter... somebody like a clone of Andrew Lloyd Whatever... lyrics by a cloned Steven Sondheim.

With a team like that, we'd be an absolute shoe-in to win it finally. And then I sincerely hope we'd hear the last of that crap fest. Some chance...

We could also considerably improve our chances in the World and European Nations cups with a bit of judicious cloning. Granted our national team has improved, but it would require a quantum leap of Sergei Bubka proportions to even compete with Italy, Germany and even poor old England among the top footie nations.

So, we'll simply clone a few players for strategic positions. Starting with a cloned Petr Cech in goal, a clone of Fabio Cannavaro shoring up the defence, a replica Kaka pulling the strings in midfield and Cristiano Ronaldo's clone knocking in the goals. The other seven players needn't even bother turn up.

Cloning worthy people is all well and good, but what about the people we don't want cloned... at any price?

I think one Iċ-Ċaqnu is quite enough on the planet. Can you imagine what sort of havoc would be wreaked if anybody mistakenly cloned him? Actually he could do very little more damage here, since he's already screwed the place totally.

And there are several TV 'personalities' that I would slap a cloning ban on. For starters, my flesh creeps at the prospect of that appalling Tista Tkun Int woman - whose name escapes me - pulling more and more disadvantaged and terminally sick people out of holes in the ground on multiple local TV channels. Oh don't please!

So yes, we'll have to be extremely careful just who we replicate. So maybe the ethical argument against the practice is the best one, for now.