As stated in my last post, we recently returned from an extended-family holiday in Connemara where, for much of the time, the wind howled deafeningly and the rain fell in buckets poured by a wrathful (and unsympathetic) God. During those evenings when we when we were forced to shelter from such elemental terrors, Cluedo (that game of beatings, stabbings, strangulations and shootings for all the family) provided moderate slices of entertainment.

Being someone who gets easily upset by the processes of change and "updating" (or should that be "updation"? What's the noun?) I did find myself slightly saddened by the transformations the suspects had undergone. Not, I hasten to add, because I automatically cling (like the hidebound and reactionary Col. Mustard) to "the old ways", but rather because I wholeheartedly subscribe to the philosophy - "Don't fuck with good design".

Take Professor Plum for example. Where once he had a memorable air of faintly roguish smugness…

…he's now (or at least he was, see below) lumbered with preposterous academic self-satisfaction and pomposity:

Plus he has a quiff. An orange quiff. And an actual humanoid body. All rendered in a charmless style that leaves little room for ambiguity (a vital quality in a game based on figuring out whodunnit).

The pitch-black backgrounds and (vividly-coloured) long-necked, curvy "plastic" bodies of the original game cards winningly combined elegance and menace. Or, as was the case with the fiery Miss Scarlett, sex and murder.

She may have been little more than a head, but to a young fella starved of sexual stimuli she had a "come hither (and I'll smash your brains in with a lead pipe)" look that was hard to resist.

The new and unimproved Scarlett looks vaguely like an emaciated Catherine Zeta Jones. Angular and cool, where the 1940's (Betty Grable-esque) version was soft, curvy and volcanic.

The ugliness of the design may partially explain why I no longer find myself as drawn to Miss. S as I once was. Of greater significance, perhaps, is the fact that in the years since I last played Cluedo I've a) had sex, and, b) seen women naked. After such formative life experiences, drawings of board game characters no longer seem quite as erotically charged.

The morning after one of our Cluedo sessions (where, surprise surprise, Scarlett was found to be the murderer) my parents-in-law opened their copy of The Telegraph to discover a coincidence - an article detailing Hasbro's latest "reinvention" of the game. Being the Telegraph, of course, the tone was a tad on the "Is nothing scared?" side - inviting its readers to bemoan the replacement of lead pipe with baseball bat, library with spa, and Professorial Plum with "video-game billionaire" Plum.

One such online reader ("Jane") took up this invitation with indignant gusto:

The launch of an American 'updated' version seems extraordinary. The thought of swapping the bumbling Colonel Mustard with 'an ageing footballer turned pundit' doesn't seem quite right. I dread to think what he will be called; Miss Scarlet swapped for a 'lap dancer' or something even more 'exotic'.

We, as a family, have been using the same board for 4 generations and see no reason to change it to some awful Americanised version. The children have 'The Simpsons' version of Cluedo; it has been played with once as they prefer the PROPER version.

Tally ho! Modern Culture 0, Middle England 1.

Anyhoo, here are the even more rejigged Scarlet (sic), Mustard and Plum:

The Zeta-Jones-ing of Scarlett/Scarlet is complete and with it my childhood love/lust is dead. Dead like a bloated celebrity corpse. In a spa. With a baseball bat rudely jammed up its arse.