TheEye is not making this up. It’s only an hour old from the Press Association. It’s real.

Weep, you fools, weep! Read and despair…

Nick Clegg will be portrayed as a tragic hero with hip hop swagger in a new musical play. The Deputy Prime Minister is the main character in Nicked, which opens on April 29. Using a book with some 18 rap and urban music songs, it charts the creation of the coalition Government after the 2010 general election up to the referendum on the Alternative Vote.

The play’s artistic director, Steven Atkinson, 26, said: “There’s almost something Hamlet-esque about Nick Clegg, he’s trapped in an impossible situation and that makes for great drama.”

Atkinson said hip hop tunes are a good way to tell the coalition’s story because the verbal sparring of rappers is similar to Prime Minister’s Questions.

And he believes political leaders keen to play down their public schoolboy background would naturally turn to urban sounds if they were musicians to prove they are cool.

Are taxpayer funds being used to put this on? Enquiring mobs with pitchforks and burning torches demand to know…