Rule One

"Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!" A favorite saying of the History Monk Lu-Tze.

Some of the other rules:

• Rule 2 - "Never refuse a weapon"
• Rule 3 - "Be afraid when you are in possession of a deadly weapon and face an unarmed man in a pose of submission"
• Rule 19 - "Always remember Rule One and ask yourself, why was it created in the first place"

Annotations

In the Doctor Who serial The Ribos Operation, The Fourth Doctor (played by Tom Baker) is forced to take a fellow Time Lord, Romana, as an assistant in an assignment. Disgruntled, he insists on ground rules, the first of which is 'Do exactly as I say'. Later in the same episode, challenged by Romana for his antics, he merely says "Remember Rule One!"

There is or used to be a variant of this in football, of which Sir Alex Ferguson could usefully be reminded.

• Rule One The referee is always right.
• Rule Two In the event of the referee ever being wrong, refer to Rule One.

Schoolteachers and mothers are also fond of adapting this variant for their own ends.