“Puppet on a String” was a huge 1967 hit and a historic song because it gave the UK its first Eurovision victory and became one of the best-known pop songs of the decade.

Surprisingly, Sandie Shaw actually disliked the song and later said she hated it from the first note because she thought it sounded old-fashioned.

She performed it barefoot, which became one of her trademarks during the 1960s and as a young kid at the time I just loved watching her on Top of the Pops.

But in 2026 this song title takes on a darker story. This is a story of a broken man, another criminal and conman that his friends call “Bibi” and his puppet is in control of the biggest and most dangerous arsenal in the world and he does not seem to understand the contents of the box of Pandora that he has just opened up. Nor the ramifications of his actions. He is just too fucking thick. In many ways the scene from the Simpsons sums him up.

Homer is walking down the street when there is a crisis at the nuclear plant and he’s worried and then he sees a “Dog with a Fluffy Tail” and runs after it, shouting, “There’s a dog with a Fluffy Tail!” Just as the puppet gets distracted by anything shiny.

This conflict will not just be limited to countries most people couldn’t find on a map, oh no…. There are about 350 million or so in the west that are quite ignorant about this. This unfortunately will have consequences and I feel many are about to get a geography lesson.