John Lennon used to enjoy preaching messages of peace but, as anyone with access to a window can tell you, his plan pretty much fell on its arse – but where John Lennon failed, maybe John Lennon's George Michael-owned piano can succeed.

In a bid to stop all global violence forever, George Michael is sending the piano that John Lennon wrote Imagine on a world tour of notorious past trouble-spots, in the hope that seeing a piano where a dead scouser wrote a glib poem will awaken the conscience of the world's warmongers enough for them to lay down their weapons. Alternatively, John Lennon's piano might just provide some cover for a Tamil Tiger child soldier as he tries to mortar-bomb a Sri Lanken government building. Which probably isn't what John Lennon was on about.

John Lennon's name is becoming more and more synonymous with peace lately. Although in his lifetime John Lennon mainly promoted peace by just repeating the word 'peace' over and over again in the dumb hope that Richard Nixon would hear it and say "Oh, peace. Sorry, I thought you were saying 'piss'! OK, my fault, I'll immediately call for the disarmament of my troops. Thanks John!", in his death John Lennon embodies the notion of peace better than anyone else.

Even though schools have banned Imagine for not being religious enough, Yoko Ono is still using John Lennon's name to promote peace – she's pushing for a John Lennon Day where everyone can forgive everyone else unless they're Turkish and injected Yoko Ono with poison in her sleep. And now George Michael is getting in on the act, too.

In 2000, George Michael bought the piano that John Lennon wrote Imagine on at auction for just over £1.5 million or – as George calls it – a single concert for a Russian. Anyway, George Michael is using John Lennon's piano to promote world peace by having its picture taken at scenes of past violence – the grassy knoll where JFK was shot, the staircase that Grant Mitchell pushed his young wife Tiffany down in Eastenders in 1998, that sort of thing – and next on the list is the spot were Martin Luther King was assassinated, as BBC News reports:

The piano will be photographed in Memphis, Tennessee, on Wednesday, the 39th anniversary of the shooting of the civil rights leader…  The site is now home to the US's National Civil Rights Museum. "The selection of this site evokes a deep sense of emotion for everyone," George Michael said. "Capturing the image of this special piano on which a song of peace was composed is part of the heartbeat of this project."

Of course, George Michael would have toured the trouble-spots himself, but he had to send John Lennon's piano instead because he was too busy crashing his car and falling asleep in his car and groping men in bushes and taking drugs on TV to fully commit to the project.

But if this John Lennon Piano of Peace tour is made into a documentary – as is the plan – then maybe world peace can be achieved. After all, nothing can remind individuals of the preciousness of human life like two wasted hours watching a film about an effing piano.

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Lennon's piano to make peace tour – BBC