IT soon became clear that Cloudcuckooland was attracting the wrong sort.

The same bickering lawyers, meddlesome town-planners, poets looking for a job, and empty-headed celebrities that had plagued Athens all came calling, and were hastily turned away.

At last, a three-man delegation came from Olympus: Poseidon, Heracles, and an obscure and rather stupid god named Triballus, complaining that no one offered them sacrifice anymore.

Pisthetaerus promised that the birds would encourage men to respect the Olympians, if he were recognised as king of the birds, and given the sceptre of Zeus, and the goddess Sovereignty as his wife.

Poseidon was appalled, and refused point-blank. But Heracles thought it sounded reasonable and the slow-witted Triballus just did what Heracles told him to do.

And so it was that the birds crowned Pisthetaerus king and chief god of Cloudcuckooland, and married him off to the lovely goddess Sovereignty, who presented him with the sceptre of Zeus.