Now that the recently deposed President of Syria, Bashar al Assad, is safely in exile in Moscow, speculation has begun as to how he is to be gradually rehabilitated back to respectability, so that he can resume rubbing shoulders with the world’s wealthy elites and leaders and enjoying their hospitality. “The reality is that just about anybody, no matter how horrendous their crimes and behaviour might have been, can be publicly rehabilitated these days,” opines Sunday Bystander columnist Ephraim Zirgok. “One minute they are being denounced as an utter bastard by the press, then within a few months, sometimes even weeks, they’ve got a column in the Daily Mail, before making tentative appearances on the BBC, in the guise of being an ‘expert commentator’ or ‘former statesman’, next thing they’ve got a book out and suddenly the media are fawning all over them again in a round of high profile publicity junkets.” Zirgok contends that the this modern phenomena of ‘instant rehabilitation’ is driven, at least n part, by social media. “Back in pre-internet days, you had to have been dead for a few decades before someone wrote a revisionist history claiming you were just a bit misunderstood,” he says. “But in today’s world of instant gratification and fast moving social media, people have short attention spans and expect everything to be done in an instant. Public figures can go from villain to hero and back again in the blink of a trending topic or hashtag.”

Top public relations (PR) guru Tarquin Ponsonby-Arce, who specialises in the public rehabilitation of ‘toxic’ public figures agrees that anyone can be rehabilitated and returned to mainstream respectability. “Look, you don’t even have to be a disgraced politician caught with their hand in the till or with their trousers down – you could even be a bone fide criminal and be transformed into public hero,” he claims. “It’s just a question of ‘re-framing’ their crimes in order to put the perpetrator into a more sympathetic light. Play the old ‘honest citizen become victim of circumstance’ card and get Joe Public to identify with you – you know, ‘under different circumstances it could have been me’ schtick. So, if say, you’d blown away an unarmed individual on your property with a shotgun, you need to re-frame it as self defence: you thought they were a burglar, say. Bingo! Suddenly, you aren’t a murderer, not even a vigilante: it was self defence, a proud Englishman defending his property. Besides, the dead guy was just a Pikey, anyway, so deserved it. Suddenly you are a national hero to the right-wing press!” Crying miscarriage of justice and implying that the law was just plain wrong and they shouldn’t have been convicted in the first place, is another viable option for convicted criminals seeking to get a right-wing media campaign behind them, argues the publicist.

So confident of his PR abilities is Ponsonby-Darce, that he believes that he could even have rehabilitated the images of some of history’s most toxic celebrities. “I’ve always said that if Jimmy Savile had been alive to face his accusers, then we’d have found some way to rehabilitate him – maybe all those people he sexually assaulted were ‘asking for it’, deliberately giving him the ‘come on’, then having second thoughts afterward,” he declares. “Obviously, this sort of ‘It was all a conspiracy’ defence isn’t without risk, but it is often the key to being able to re-cast yourself as the victim rather than the perpetrator. Just look at Donald Trump – disgraced President who denied an election result and tried to mount an insurrection, adjudicated rapist, convicted felon, with countless other criminal charges pending against him and, lo and behold, President again after four years after re-casting himself as the victim of multiple conspiracies.” Consequently, Ponsonby-Arce believes that, given a bit of time and former president Assad too could be reinvented as a ‘good guy’. After all, as the PR man points out, the luck’s with Assad – unlike fellow Middle Eastern dictators Qaddafi and Saddam, he’s at least managed to avoid retribution in the form of a violent death. Plus, he’s safe in Moscow, capital of a nation adept at casting itself as the victim, even when it invades neighbours without provocation.

But where to start with Assad? Ponsonby-Darce suggests that charity work, could represent a good starting point. “Monsters have, historically, liked to hide behind charitable work that makes them look like saints. Remember how, back in the day, you weren’t allowed to say a bad word about Jimmy Savile, let alone suggest that some of those rumours about him might have substance, because ‘he does a lot for charity’ and therefore beyond reproach,” muses the PR guru. “So, that would be my initial approach to rehabilitating Assad: large charitable donations, (after all, he’s going to have millions, probably billions looted from Syria during his time in power), preferably to charities associated with helping children. Especially sick children. Then build from there: maybe set up his own charitable foundation doing some kind of research into horrible childhood diseases, perhaps even set up the odd clinic or two, to treat them.” Ponsonby-Darce adds that it would be essential that, at every point, Assas had pictures taken of himself with sick kiddies. “Lots of pictures,” he says. “Oh, not to forget his glamourous wife – lots of pictures of her with sick kiddies and generally doing worthy shit while dressed in designer clothes would work wonders, too.”

If all else fails, Ponsoby-Darce suggests, Assad could always try what is fast becoming the ‘go to’ defence for wrong-doers everywhere to justify themselves and garner sympathy: ‘it wasn’t my fault I groped those women or embezzled those funds or cheated on my wife or murdered thousands of people in a genocide – I couldn’t help myself as I’m neurodivergent.’ “Gregg Wallace is a pioneer here, suggesting recently that his alleged sexual misconduct is the result of autism,” he explains. “Indeed, Boris Johnson has also now tested the waters with a variation, claiming that he might be ‘somewhere on the spectrum’, again implying autism.” Not that this approach is entirely new, Ponsonby-Darce observes, being an update on the old favourite, ‘I’m suffering from dementia’, deployed tby he likes of Mohammed Al Fayed to avoid rape charges, for instance. “It doesn’t generate as much sympathy as the neurodivergent bollocks, but has proven surprisingly successful,” he says. “Not that any of it should make any difference – whether you are getting your knob out in front of your female colleagues or using chemical weapons to commit mass murder, you are doing it because you are a dick, not because you have ADHD or Asperger’s. But the public love a sob story.” Despite his confidence over the rehabilitation of Assad, Ponsonby-Darce does concede that his agency’s efforts don’t always go according to plan. “I know, I know – Liz Truss! She’s just so batshit crazy that she’s never managed to get beyond the extreme right lunatic fringe speaking tour and even there, nobody seems to want to listen to her lunacy,” he says. “But in Assad’s case, I’m confident that if we give it six months, a year at tops, he’ll be on This Morning and Loose Women, laughing and smiling, telling the hosts amusing stories of genocide and how his memoirs are now in all good bookshops.”