Was I just going through a phase when I bought a bit of the Moon?

To clarify further: I own such a certificate providing the mice haven’t eaten it, as they have done everything else in the attic (recently, I decided to dig out my old kickboxing gloves and found them both eaten away).

I’d bought the lunar rights as a present for someone, and decided to deal myself into the action too. To be candid, I fear the document carries little weight in property law. But there may be enough of us out there, possessing such documents, to mount a legal challenge.

If such an event comes to pass, we may have to deal with the Chinese. It was reported this week that they are “aggressively” keen to lay claim to vast swathes of the barren, but potentially mineral-rich, globe.

Bill Nelson, head of Nasa and a former astronaut (and senator), said they were likely to operate under the banner of “scientific research”, like whalers do here on Earth, which is – as Billy Connolly’s weatherman patronisingly told viewers – the planet where you currently live.

Robert McNeil: Could this be the year that I say goodbye to all tatt?

They will then say: “Keep out, we’re here, this is our territory,” Mr Nelson claimed. This is grim news, not just for us, but for the universe. It implies that we are going to make as much a mess of ooter space as we have done of the Earth.

Hitherto, we have always assumed it would be decent, upstanding people called Reginald, Brad or Muriel who would colonise ooter space; people who floss nightly, are kind to animals, and still pretend they believe in God.

Mind you, it’s not as if the ordinary Chinese folk in spacesuits will be anything other than nice. But, alas, they will be in the pay of an evil dictatorship and will have to dae as they’re tellt: “Once ye get oan yonder Moon, stoat aboot a bit then put up a sign saying, ‘Keep oot, ken?’” My gratitude to Google Translate for that.

Many companies offer a certificate for a 'piece of the moon' (Image: Moon Register Gallery)

Russia, North Korea and Iran, the Axis of Nutterdom, would surely also want to get involved, as they’ve a yen for aggrandisement and can’t just keep to themselves as the British have done historically.

While these bizarrely comic-book baddies would use the Moon for evil purposes – marching aboot and so forth – the West’s motives would be purely altruistic: buy-to-lets, the first Nando’s, a yoga class.

We’d bring civilisation to the appallingly barren orb. Before you know it, there’d be a gardening club, a Waterstone’s, and plumbing (sine qua non of civilisation). We’d bring privet, public lavvies and municipal libraries paid for out of lunar rates.

The baddies would bring missiles, quarries, mines, prisons and march-pasts. The other night, with nothing on the telly’s 250 channels, I went oot the back and had a look at the Moon through binoculars. Nothing much happening. Peaceful, you might say.

But that could all change if Earth’s bad guys start making their claims without proper certificates. Of course, the process could work in reverse. Aliens might visit Earth clutching their certificates, before unleashing mighty hell on us all: their legal team.

Hitherto, we’ve always assumed that aliens coming to Earth would be called Reginald, Brad or Muriel, who kept their tentacles spotlessly clean and could tell a weed from a flower.

But, even were that so, what if they landed in North Korea or Iran? Assuming they weren’t machine-gunned to bits immediately, or stoned to death for being Satan, they’d say: “Take me to your leader, ken?”

Then they’d be frogmarched to meet Kim or Khamenei and, after two minutes, would conclude: “These people are nutters.” Actually, all evidence suggests they’d land in Bonnybridge, where they’d be taken to meet the leader of the cooncil, who’d ask them if they got parked all right and if they’d like a wee scone.

Robert McNeil: There’s no end in sight but I’m sick to death of mortality

But, assuming all the traffic is the other way, I have to consider what I’d do with my wee plot of land on the Moon. Doubtless, I’d end up next to someone playing loud doomf-doomf-doomf music, who blocked off my entrance with their module, and refused to say hello when I passed them while out for a bouncy walk on the wasteland.

As regular readers know, I’ve a low opinion of Earthling behaviour on this planet, and have no reason to believe it’ll be anything different on the Moon, unless it attracts the best called Reginald, Brad or Muriel, people with proper certificates.