Absolutely pukka, honest-to-God truth: on more than one occasion in my disreputable past, usually over a considerable amount of alcohol, I and my friends have sometimes speculated what Thunderbirds would have been like, had it been made by Americans.

By “Thunderbirds”, we didn’t mean the current, much-hyped movie; instead we meant the original, Gerry Anderson marionette show.

And by “Americans”, we didn’t mean the sensitive, politically correct ones that you get nowadays – instead we meant Hollywood Action moguls, like Bruckheimer, or the people who produced shows like The Six-Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, or The A-Team.

Those days – and those people – are gone… or so I thought. Too much namby-pamby do-gooding, and you can only get away with stuff like that by being “ironically post-70s” and poking fun at the culture.

To save us come Trey Parker and Matt Stone – the South Park guys, who – to judge by the clips – lay on the irony so thickly that you can’t see it at all, whilst seeking to piss-off absolutely everybody in:

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE
[www.teamamericamovie.com]

Go. Watch the trailer at [www.apple.com] ; There is nothing more you need do.

They have inadvertently answered all our questions, and I only worry that (a) they have the content to back up the trailer, and (b) I don’t know enough about modern America to get all the jokes.

I suppose after someone made a live-action Thunderbirds, it was inevitable.