The Trinity course will last a year, which in University Time, means about 20 weeks. In its second term, it will feature a challenge for students, which will determine whether or not they enter the adult world with a qualification in the myriad ways you can murder badly-drawn prostitutes.

Each of the 25 students on the course, having studied hard and done comprehensive revision, will have to contribute to a group project which could involve the development of a video game. "Interactive entertainment is one of the fastest growing and most exciting areas of global industry right now, " said Dr Steven Collins, director of the course. "It presents a fantastic opportunity, not just for students and individuals but for the country."

By coincidence, I've been developing a video game myself. I'm not much of a techie and will have to secure a partner to do the complicated work of formulas and writing codes and making endless cups of coffee. Being more on the vision side of things, I will have to give the concept to my partner in order that he or she can make it reality. Perhaps one of the Trinity students would like to take on the task.

The idea came to me when I was on holidays the other week. It was a kind of post-election break, albeit about 10 weeks shorter than the recommended holiday for newly-elected politicians. I was mulling on the election result and on the bizarre makeup of the new government.

Leading us, now that Tony Blair is no longer in power, is the dodgiest prime minister in Europe, a millionaire who can pass himself off as a man of the people, a magnet for other people's money but with no coherent or credible explanation as to where this cash came from. In government with him are the PDs, a party comprehensively rejected by the Irish people, and the Greens, whose decision to go into government, thereby abandoning most of their core principles and selling out most of their voters, has been the single most corrupt act in Irish politics this century. The Beverley Flynn controversy was all the rage the week I was off as well.

All in all, it seemed to me, there was a cartoonish quality about Irish politics at the moment which couldn't properly be highlighted through journalism or documentary. To really appreciate the absurdities, inconsistencies and madnesses of politics, something more left-field was required. And so I came up with my video game.

The working title, with apologies to Trollope, is 'The Way We Live Now', although I suspect that, in time, it will have to be changed to something more snappy. The main character is a heavily made-up and sinister looking chap called Anorak Man.

Anorak Man rules the roost in his divided neighbourhood by playing one street off against another. He makes promises to win support . . .

bonus points as they are known in this game . . . but then breaks the promises by pleading changed circumstances. To win the game, you have to kill him.

But our hero has a special quality:

every time you hit him, or attack him, he gets stronger. One of the quirks of the game is that although Anorak Man has an almost infinite number of lives, you have only one.

There are many other characters.

There is a woman called Cleverly Stupid Grin, whose smile gets bigger and bigger the longer the game goes on. Though she has been cast into the darkness by Anorak Man, her father, the fiendish Peeflynn, has compromising information about Anorak Man, which he has used to get Stupid Grin back into her leader's good books.

The only way to kill Anorak Man, although players of the game will have to work this out for themselves, is to extract this information from Peeflynn and his cronies, Rambo and Haw Hee. Other minor characters, such as The Rabbit and Dream On Baby, can help you do this, although in truth, they're not much use. From time to time, friendly-looking green characters called Gormless and the Sergeant will sidle up to you and offer to help you defeat Anorak Man. But don't be fooled by these sneaky creatures: they are flunkies of Anorak Man and will do anything he asks, up to and including mass suicide.

It's a game you can win with a mixture of ruthless violence and clever strategy, but you must get the mix right. Go too much on the attack, like Dream On Baby, and Anorak Man becomes stronger and stronger; rely too much on your own cleverness, like The Rabbit, and you end up back where you started out.

I anticipate a few problems with the game. Some people will argue that it's unrealistic because it raises the possibility that Anorak Man can be defeated, when the evidence from real life is that he can't. But that is the beauty of my game. A significant majority of Irish people do not like Anorak Man and his way of doing business and will jump at the chance to destroy him, if only in a virtual universe. Marketed properly, it could make me my fortune. I expect a call from the PlayStation people, and Trinity College, very soon.