When I woke up this morning I had a sudden, strange paranoid fantasy that when I switched the radio on, the lead news story would be that John McCain had won the US election with a convincing majority.

I've avoided the listening to the radio or reading a newspaper all day, just in case it's true, but it did give me an idea for a film, a sort of a cross between Groundhog Day and Conspiracy Theory in which a man wakes up the day after a major election to find that the previous day never happened and the wrong man (or woman) is heading for the White House.

Yes, it's unashamedly American, but the last time I looked the UK Film Council weren't handing out seven-figure cheques for hastily conceived, high-concept film ideas.

I haven't quite decided whether it should be played as a broad, knock-about comedy (with Jim Carrey) or a more edgy, paranoid thriller (with Will Smith or possibly Shia LaBeouf^*) so I thought I should work up both ideas...

The Do Over (2009)

Dave Putz (Jim Carrey) is the host of a cult cable television show called "Ain't That Nuts!?", which presents wild and wacky stories from across the world. Despite his energetic, crazy persona, Dave hates his job and harbours ambitions of being a serious newscaster.

When he wakes up one morning to find that everyone except him seems to have lost a day and that the result of the previous day's election has somehow been reversed, he realises that this is his opportunity to become a real journalist.

He breaks the story on his cable show, but no-one takes it seriously. However, Dave won't let it go and his growing obsession and rapidly falling audience figures cause him to get fired. Then his girlfriend dumps him and one by one his friends disown him.

He tries to find someone to corroborate his story but everyone thinks he's mad, until he gets a call from a young woman who saw his show and has exactly the same recollection of events as he does. Trouble is, she has a history of mental illness and no-one believes her either.

The Do Over is a comedy about being the only sane person in crazy world and teaches us that sometimes, to get want you want, you have to go a little mad.

273/238 (2009)

David Putzler is a solitary, level-headed insurance claims investigator who wakes up one day to find that a narrow Democratic victory in the previous day's general election has been mysteriously replaced in the public's minds by a Republican landslide.

He becomes convinced that a sinister group within the existing administration has managed to pull off an audacious experiment in mass brainwashing and he sets out to prove it, using all his skills as a claims investigator.

But the problem is, that if such a conspiracy has occurred, the tracks have been covered very thoroughly: online news stories have been doctored and newspapers from the previous day all seem to have been mysteriously pulped &mdash even the recording of the election coverage on his TiVo has been wiped.

Finding no evidence to support his theory, he starts to doubt his own sanity until he makes contact with a small group of people in an internet chat room, calling themselves Thesis 273/238 (referring to the original split of Electoral College votes), whose memories, like his, have remained intact.

David gains the trust of this diverse set of paranoid characters and realises that what they all have in common is protection from electromagnetic radiation — one member is an eccentric survivalist who lives in a lead-lined nuclear bunker, another is a homeless woman who sleeps under an electricity pylon, and David himself has a metal plate in his head from a childhood accident.

Working together over the internet they discover a loose end from the almost perfect cover-up, the one piece of incontrovertible evidence that will prove their version of events, and are on the verge of going public.

But suddenly members of Thesis 273/238 starts turning up dead and they soon realise that one of their number is actually a government agent. But who is it, and can David get the evidence to the one person in the government he can trust before he ends up dead too?

273/238 is a high-tech, paranoid thriller which asks the question: if you can't trust the truth, what can you trust?

Time to make a nice cup of tea, sit back, and wait for the phone to ring...

*Am I the only person who thinks Shia LaBoeuf sounds like a dish off a menu in a posh 1970s restaurant? — “Yes, we are ready to order. I'll have the duck a l'orange and my wife will have the shia la boeuf.”