Sold! To the man with the Lulu hair-do

"The Man Who Sold The Moon," sang young Davie Jones in 1876, and ever since then, enterprising charlatans have been selling plots of the moon from under our very noses. Yes, it's August. But only for five more days. And a bit.

While planning permission is not an issue - there is no law in space - a claim of ownership has been made by US entrepreneur Dennis Hope, who in 1980 spotted a loophole in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty.

I love that little parenthetical information byte: there is no law in space.

Which sounds like the tag line of a bad movie, with ready-made villains in the form of sleazy estate agents and land-grabbers.

So the NASA guys swing into town, ready to build their moon base, and on their primo plot, they find a little shotgun shack under a dome, with some doofus living in it and an estate agent standing outside, waving a sheet of paper.

"You can't build your moonbase here," he shouts. "This man owns this plot. I sold it to him in 1973."

Our NASA hero looks at the sheet of paper briefly, then says, "Who? This guy?" and shoots the doofus in the face.

There is no law in space.