There have been Monopoly sets created with Kent landmarks – even special editions for particular towns. But what if you played a realistic version today?

With properties at market prices.

For starters, if you thought a game normally seemed to last for several days, if you started with the regulation £1,500 it could take years before you actually circled the board enough (landing on Go to double your salary each time) before you could afford any properties. Which is, if nothing else, realistic.

Picking up the occasional Community Chest card declaring ‘you’ve won second prize in a beauty contest, collect £10’ will barely scratch the surface.

If we’re playing devil’s advocate here, let’s assume the blue-chip big-money properties would be the likes of Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells (taking the place of Mayfair and Park Lane). Those cheap brown ones? Let’s be honest, probably somewhere in Sheppey (no offence to the good folk there).

Given, according to Zoopla, the average house price in, say, Sheerness, is £190,731 if you started your traditional Christmas game on December 24 and played it constantly, you might have enough by June to actually buy one.

The £729,000 average in Sevenoaks may mean those pricey properties never come out of the box.

Even if they upped that traditional starting amount you get before the dice are thrown in anger to £1m (having to do a spot of ‘quantitative easing’ in the process – ie printing an awful lot more money so that each box comes like a suitcase overflowing with cash) you’d still find it a longer-than-normal slog.

Then there’s the utilities – the electric and water company. One assumes the water company will be busy paying out dividends relentlessly to shareholders, while the square will be probably be smeared with an unpleasant looking brown substance.

Plus, every time you land on one, it will set you back about £1,000.

Train stations? Well, it would only be fair to have our big international stations on there – so Ebbsfleet and Ashford.

However, given Eurostar no longer stops at them, owning them would offer little prestige.

If you get sent to jail, meanwhile, the chances are you won’t need to throw double to get out. They’ll almost certainly be full and you’ll be free to go on your way.

As for ‘free parking’? Let’s be honest – that doesn’t exist anymore does it? So you’re probably looking at paying a few quid every time you land on that for a few minutes too.

And let’s not even get started on income tax.

So next time you crack open the box for a ‘quick’ game just consider that if the winner only emerges six hours later, you’ve probably got off lightly. It could be a hell of a lot worse…