COULROPHOBIA, or the fear of clowns, has been reclassified from an anxiety disorder to a perfectly reasonable response to modern life.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists has confirmed that events of the last three years have proved that clowns are a very real threat to each and every one of us.

Psychiatrist Norman Steele said: “Clowns have never been funny. But until recently their true terror has been the stuff of fiction, like the Joker or Stephen King’s It.

“However, the premiership of Boris Johnson and his precursor across the Atlantic has proved once and for all that they are properly scary.

“It is now clear that clowns, in their patched, baggy trousers, with their backfiring cars and balloon shapes and coming off badly in boxing bouts with kangaroos, are the number one threat to our lives.

“Indeed anyone making you laugh is not to be trusted. Even stand-up performers or panel-show regulars are dangerous authoritarians who would giggle while they watched you fight your loved ones for the last rat kebab.

“Be afraid of clowns. Be very afraid. They are not genial, self-deprecating funsters but psychopathic arch-manipulators. Today’s buffoon is tomorrow’s fascist dictator.”