According to scientific estimates, the mind of the average political pundit will store the thought of John Major romancing Edwina Curry in a pair of underpants for one hundred and fifty years. Some say that this makes death a better option in the short term.

This week, the Tories hope to erase the memory of Major-sans-pants, with the launch of their new film. It stars everybody’s favourite Green sled-hopping bike-riding hood-wearing groove-getter-downer-in, Lord-in-everything-but-name: mild mannered Dave Cameron. Quaintly titled: ‘Superman Returns’, the film is a 120 minute attempt to downplay many of Dave’s accomplishments. Instead of harping on about his charity work, the film chooses to portray him in more humble surroundings: such as saving the planet earth by catching meteors in his bare teeth.

‘I wanted the film to portray a softer side of the party,’ admits the self-proclaimed Man-of-Steel. ‘You know, outside my life in politics, I live a rather hum-drum existence as a super hero. And that’s the rather simple message I wanted to convey to the people of earth and any mutant galactic space villains who think of trying to push us around. So John Prescott: consider yourself warned.’

Friday: Prime Minister Tony Blair took a welcome break from the troubles currently surrounding Labour Party donations in order to support Sports Relief, the UK-based charity set up to help morally impoverished sportsmen match the fundraising efforts of their morally impoverished counterparts in what is euphemistically still called ‘the arts’.

In a sponsored binge led by Steve Redgrave, Dame Tanni Grey Thompson, and darts-great Bobby George, Blair downed three full bottles of his favourite Russian vodka. In the process of drinking himself into a stupor, he raised twelve pounds twenty three pence and declared himself the next Bishop of Rome.

Said a slightly tipsy PM after the event: ‘What a great day, guys! I love you all… You really are beautiful people…You are… You are… You are… dirty, rotten, stinking bastards! You let me down. Just like I knew you would! Left me out there on my own… My arse hanging in the air like… like… that… Hey, I think I’ve soiled myself, guys! Aw, come on guys!’ Commentators are already considering this the most coherent policy statement to come out of the government for the last three years.

When challenged by reporters to respond to the latest allegations of financial irregularity in the Labour Party, a clearly angry Blair swung out a fist and punched a lamppost. Despite suffering some mild shock, the lamppost still managed to file its report for the BBC’s evening bulletin. In the meantime, Blair had been led away by security guards. He was last heard suggesting: ‘A Chinese? Who could go for a Chinese?’

“These are the worst kind of prisoners: they abuse the system in vaguely comic ways. They steal from the kitchens. Play poker in the coal room. And they have even hid hard liquor in the metal posts of their beds.” Our guide was thirty-year veteran of the English penal system, Prison Officer Mackay, an unusually dour Scot who looks on H.M. Westminster as his personal fiefdom. “But I don’t care how funny they think they are,” he declared loudly, as he marched us through a prison yard full of murderers, rapists, and thieves, “I believe in treating scum like scum.”

It may sound like an old fashioned way of looking at world, but it seems to suit this forgotten world. Built in the last century, these old Victorian prison blocks are ruled with old fashioned notions of honour. “It is the duty of the experienced lags to help keep the young offenders out of trouble,” explained Mackay as he led us to meet some of the Westminster’s inmates. “But you have to keep a watch out. You never know what devious tricks they get up to.”
He led us to a cell where we met ‘Prezza’, guardian of his young friend, Tone. Prezza has been in and out of nick for most of his life. A convicted hazard to the environment, he is currently serving an indeterminate sentence at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Countless appeals have been made for his release, many by the press, but all have failed and it looks like Prezza will be here for a while longer. “I’m not for quitting while my young friend’s still here,” Prezza admitted with a kind of paternal pride. ‘I have to stay around to make sure he doesn’t go wrong.”

We asked him if it was really that bad in a modern prison, but Prezza seemed sheepish to admit the truth. “Strewth, you don’t know half of it. All I’ll say is that I keep young Tone from going anywhere near the showers. Some of the people around her will do anything for half-an-ounce of shag tobacco, or as we call it in these parts, ‘a knighthood’.”

 

As their fund-raiser, Lord Levy, continues to protest his innocence, Labour Party donors have been defending the government from accusations that party officials traded honours for cash. ‘I’ve earned everything through hard graft,’ said seventeen year old porn magnate, Viscount Sir Andrew ‘Smithy’ Smith, OBE, KGB, Knight Errant of the Order of St. Michael, High Commissioner of The Cross. ‘The idea that I could pay my way into the establishment insults not just me but my whole family. The whole business has been a terrible ordeal and we can hardly attend the opera without all the commoners staring at us in our box.’ 

It has been alleged that rich business men, sympathetic to the Labour Party, have been given honours in exchange for loans. It is a charge dismissed as ‘the cheapest form of politics’ by an unnamed spokesman who insisted that ‘we wouldn’t never stoop so low for anything less than a knighthood’.

Developing…

It would seem that Sir Cliff Richard up to his old tricks again. In what has become a tradition as popular as strawberries and cream, the habitual British losers, ticket touting, and hot lesbian action on centre court, rain at Wimbledon again meant another impromptu performance by Britain’s favourite colour-blind celebrity. The heavens may have opened but it was Hell on centre court as a captive crowd were serenaded to all those hits that made Cliff such a popular star in the 1930s.

Never one to take himself seriously, Cliff – who turns 83 this year – topped his performances of previous years by amazing the audience with some unexpected tomfoolery, removing his famous toupee and tucking it under his nose. ‘Just a bit of fun,’ admitted Cliff. ‘I saw Elton do it with his syrup last year but I was determined that I’d be the first of us to do it in public.’

Asked if this would be his last year at Wimbledon, Cliff joked: ‘We’ll have to see if they ask me back.’ Wimbledon officials promised that the roof over centre court will be finished for the next championship. A spokesman admitted: ‘The roof is costing us millions but it’s worth every penny if it means that bloody man won’t take it on himself to sing every time it rains.’

Health Minister Caroline Flint has revealed plans to introduce “a “clear and specific ban” on methods of choosing the gender of a baby. Also to be criminalised are methods parents have used to choose the name of their baby. Putting ‘names in hat’, throwing darts at a dartboard, and the much criticised practise of going ‘eeny, meany, miney, moe’ are all to given a mandatory 10 year prison sentence.

 

Shocking evidence emerged, Wednesday, of the US administration’s continued efforts to suppress popular dissent over its unpopular Middle East policy. Photographs have emerged of one of the country’s most outspoken critic of the Iraq War being forcibly detained at the Guantanamo base in Cuba.

Elmo, the popular character on children’s TV show ‘Sesame Street’, was taken from his Upper Manhattan apartment on Friday and flown straight to Cuba where he was immediately stripped, put into isolation, and made to watch reruns of the ‘I Love Lucy Show’. Human rights activists in the US have immediately responded to what they see as cruelty on an unprecedented scale.

Meanwhile, a government insider has admitted to The Spine that the move is the first in a series of planned arrests of radical muppets, who have been actively working to undermine the government by their campaign of educating the American young.

Retail stores have noticed an increase in the purchasing of Elmo dolls which, through their resemblance to the orange jumpsuits, have become a secret icon of opposition to ‘Gitmo’.

Speaking under the promise of complete anonymity, Marine Sergeant Eugene Billywicker explained: ‘We’re being proactive in hitting these terrorist-loving scum where it hurts. They say they’re innocent but we know there’s somebody working them in the background. But now we’re on to them and are out to get the rest of the gang – Kermit, Fozzie, Big Bird, that little thing that looked like a shrimp but I ain’t sure what the hell it is… We’re out to get them all.’

Developing.

technorati tags:muppets, comedy, satire, iraq, us, television, humor, humour

As nuclear power continues to dominate the headlines, Tony Blair took an opportunity on Wednesday to remind the country of the much maligned oil industry. In a speech to the bosses of BP, ICI, and Ambre Solaire, he revealed the government’s long term plans for the petrochemical industry. The ten year scheme aims to turn the UK into the world’s leading supplier of body oil, tanning lotion, and luxury balms, whilst investment into Further Education courses in ‘Health & Beauty’ will see the UK eclipse Sweden as the source of the world’s masseurs.

‘Look,’ the Prime Minister said, gesticulating like a 1980s electro-synth-body-popping pioneer, ‘I mean… hey guys… you know… we all need… you know… love… and oil… and all that..’ He went on to praise the state of the industry, concluding his speech with the encouraging words: ‘Come on, guys… love my tan!’

With the revenue from North Sea oil due to run out in the next twenty years, Blair hopes that a move to the production of body oils will provide the UK economy with the boost it needs. It has been calculated that an area the size of Dorset with be completely covered in fake tan by the year 2012 and some areas of Essex will be officially reclassified as being ‘mediterranean orange’.

The government has announced its long-awaited review of Britain’s nuclear power industry. In a far reaching nine hundred page document they conclude that ‘everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about… Pah! Those fish always had two heads. It’s genetics… What do we know? We’re politicians.’

News for would-be authors everywhere. After penning her latest novel, glamour model, humanitarian, and spokesperson for the plastics industry Jordan announced that her much publicised breast implants actually improved her literary output. ‘It’s true,’ she explained to the London Review of Books. ‘And what’s more: they’re fully endorsed by both Oxford and Cambridge University presses. Not only do they give me somewhere to hold my pens when I’m considering the scansion of my lines, but they have inspired some of the symbolism that my fans now come to expect’.

The unexpected transition from soft-porn role model to literary great has not been an easy one. ‘It plays hell with my nails,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how Virginia Woolf coped…. I guess that’s why she ended up killing herself.’

Asked if she had started work on her next novel, Jordan beamed. ‘You’ll have to wait and see, but I shouldn’t expect anything for a few years. I’ve decided that nothing less than a thousand pages will do from now on. I see myself as the spiritual successor to Henry James but with bigger tits.’