Splice me a second liver, folks. A rumour has slithered north from some unnamed tax haven of an island that the first human clone trial is underway. Unconfirmed, they say. Unconfirmed. As if the universe ever waits for confirmation before ruining your Tuesday. This is the sort of thing that gives eugenics a bad name, or at least a more expensive PR firm.

According to a source who shall remain nameless because he was paid in offshore cryptocurrency and a bottle of single malt, a team of renegade biologists have been beavering away on a private atoll. The sort of place where the sand is whiter than a lobbyist's smile. They've allegedly produced a viable human embryo, a perfect genetic copy of some tech billionaire who probably owns a yacht called 'My Other Yacht.'

Now, I admit, I have a vested interest in this. I have a gin-addled liver that I rather rely on. If they start growing spare parts, where does that leave the rest of us? Will we be reduced to trading organs on the black market while the rich just pop down to their personal clone farm for a fresh kidney? But let's not be hasty. This is still unconfirmed. Like my marriage. Or the existence of gluten-free bread that tastes like bread.

Let's consider the practicalities. If you clone a man, do you also clone his combover, his penchant for questionable metaphors, his tax evasion strategies? The ethics committees of the world are probably having a collective aneurysm as we speak, but who are they to stand in the way of progress? Progress, my friends, is the art of ignoring the last catastrophe while hurtling towards the next.

The story originates from a single email, leaked by an alleged disgruntled lab assistant who says his work was 'unsung and unappreciated.' I know the feeling, mate. I once wrote a brilliant satire on the housing market and they buried it in the property section. But I digress.

The island in question is owned by a consortium of investors who are so secretive they make the Illuminati look like a bunch of teenagers on TikTok. They've built a facility that is purportedly 'off-grid,' though I suspect it's connected to a grid of gold and diamonds. The head scientist is a Dr. Emilio Montoya, a man who has the distinct honour of having been expelled from three countries for 'unauthorised cell multiplication.' A hero? A villain? A bloke who just really wants to see his own face on a postage stamp?

This raises the perennial question: what would a clone say at a dinner party? 'Hello, I'm you, but with less baggage.' Or perhaps: 'I demand equal pay and a separate bedroom.' The mind boggles. The liver quivers.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The report is, as we say in the trade, unconfirmed. That means some bloke on a forum wrote it, and then another bloke tweeted it, and then a third bloke put it on a website that looks like it was designed by a blind person with a grudge. So take it with a grain of salt, or a grain of what passes for reason in this fever swamp of a world.

For now, I'll raise my glass to the brave new world, to the next step in human evolution, to the beautiful, terrifying notion that we can now have two of everything. Including, presumably, the ability to write clichéd thinkpieces about cloning. God help us all.