Critics may have accused him of mishandling the important jobs but John Prescott spent Sunday proving that he is still at the heart of government and that he knows exactly what he is doing. The Deputy Prime Minister was making a surprise visit to MI5’s London headquarters when he declared to waiting reporters that ‘I’m here to check on this here National Treat Level.’ Half an hour later, he emerged from the staff canteen to assure everyone: ‘Now that’s a proper cup of tea…’

When it was suggested that he had made yet another blunder, Mr. Prescott responded in typically robust fashion. ‘This is not the time for blaming anybody. I came here today to support our people and to say that our intelligence service is still one of the finest in the world and that they put on a right proper spread. I also wanted to restate, on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Blair, that we should maintain our vigilance in the matter of calories, whilst also making real and significant improvements in the provision of pastries, bread puddings, and jaffa cakes.’

Paris Hilton, the property heiress, novelist, highboard champion, and recently voted, by the Society for the Blind, the most beautiful woman in the world, had to be sedated on Saturday, after her pet honey bear savagely mauled her. The bear, known to schoolchildren everywhere as the Honey Monster, had become a firm favourite with celebrities and a regular face at society parties. Ms. Hilton (47) recently adopted the eight foot high creature declaring it the perfect pet for her spacious twenty-two acre penthouse. The police have yet to discover a motive for the attack, though it is believed that Ms. Hilton has recently suggested that the bear lose a little weight and had threatened to cut sugar from its diet.

After the attack, the Honey Monster was rushed to the local hospital where it was given tetanus shots. It is said to be a comfortable and plans to resume work next week. Speaking through its agent, the Honey Monster declared: ‘I want to thank my fans everywhere for their support at this difficult time. In the meanwhile, I’d like to recommend that my good friend, Christopher Biggins, take my place as official “friend to the stars”.’ Lawyers for Ms. Hilton assure us that she is not after a replacement. ‘Paris has had it with all of them,’ they said. ‘The last thing we want is for this to happen again. Paris is lucky to have gotten away with a few scratches, but we hate to think what would happen if Christopher Biggins ever went on the rampage.’

After months of consultation, The Conservative Party has finally revealed their new logo, with party chairman, Francis Maude, admitting that the final design was a mixture of the old with the new. ‘We couldn’t decide on either the torch that has represented us for so long, or the oak tree that we believe symbolises the new green credentials of the party. In the end, we decided to merge the two ideas by torching the tree.’

Click for bigger

The News of the World phonetapping scandal continues to grow, with the release of a tape purporting to be of Noel Edmonds speaking to the ‘banker’ during the recording of his hit show, Deal Or No Deal.

‘We didn’t believe it when we got the tape,’ said our anonymous source inside the rival tabloid newspaper currently sitting on the scoop. ‘We thought it was a joke because there wasn’t actually a banker on the other end of the phone. It was just some bored production assistant and Noel was just making stuff up, as though he was in some high powered business negotiation.’

The revelation that the ‘banker’ may not exist is sure to excite conspiracy theorists who have spent the last year on the internet exchanging what are obviously crazy theories about the show. ‘It’s all bloody random!’ screamed one such unbalanced individual, speaking to The Spine. ‘There’s no skill involved. Ruddy monkeys could be trained to play that game, only Noel wouldn’t be able to persuade monkeys to ring up a quiz line, at a pound a pop, to answer some dumb question in the ridiculously unlikely chance that they’d win. The whole show is predicated on people’s greed and stupidity, and what is saddest of all is that the people it milks for these small donations are the very people who can afford to lose it the least.’ The madman’s totally indefensible rant went on: ‘The government is rightly criticised for wanting to put casinos in areas of high social deprivation, yet TV shows routinely take people’s money with these horrible little schemes involving high rate telephone lines and extremely long odds.’

Keywords are big on the web, and having a site that ranks highly in search engines for the keyword ‘automobile’, for example, can make you very rich indeed. This site ranks very low for all of the major keywords, so I’ll never be rich, but I am rather proud to discover that The Spine is currently the number one rated site on Yahoo! for the phrase ‘midgets pole dancing’.

And so, to all of my visitors who have found their way here because of this wonderful phrase, let me just say if you’re looking for midgets pole dancing, then you’ve probably come to the right place. Unfortunately, I don’t actually have any pole dancing midgets to show you at this moment of time, but I’m still glad that you’re here. Pull up a chair. Make sure you have a good view. I’m sure we’ll have some pole dancing midgets for you soon. The problem is that they’re a bit like car keys. You can find the little blighters once you’ve put them down. I know we had some lying around here this morning…

The Prime Minister has decided that former PM Margaret Thatcher would not receive a state funeral, but his office could not rule out the possibility that the honour might be permitted for other ministers and former ministers. ‘We’d quite like to arrange one for a certain Chancellor,’ admitted a spokesman. Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has admitted that as far as his own death is concerned, his funeral plans are straightforward. ‘I’m having myself a pyramid,’ he explained, ‘and I intend to be buried with a hundred civil servants who will serve me in the afterlife.’ He went on: ‘I have some big plans for the afterlife insofar as I’ve heard all about these here, ‘Elysian Fields’, which I intend to use for low cost housing for the working class cherubim.’

Wristbands have become the fashion accessory for anybody wishing to make a political point without the bother of thinking something through. Now, nearly a year since he was spotted wearing his very first band, Conservative leader, David ‘The Earl’ Cameron, has admitted they have left him with both a painful wrist and a vague grip on world politics. ‘I can barely hold a single coherent point of view,’ admitted Cameron on breakfast TV. ‘It really is quite intolerable. All my bands are beginning to contradict each other. I don’t know if I’m for deforestation or against it. Are we saving whales or breading them for their meat? I look at my wrist and it all gets so confusing. I don’t know what to think about anything…’

Doctors responded to the news with a shrug of their collective shoulders. ‘We’ve been warning against this for years,’ said a spokesman for the British Medical Council. ‘The research done on the Comic Relief red nose has yet to be completed, but it would appear that long term damage can be done by wearing them. Up to twenty years after you first wear one, a red nose can still cause allergies, incontinence, and a tendency to tediously pontificate on a subject. We call it the “Ben Elton effect”. We believe similar ailments are caused by these charity wristbands. Users are already showing that exposure to the chemicals in the bands, often made under slave-like conditions in third world countries, leads to an unreasonable belief that they occupy the moral high ground. This is, of course, not true because the manufacture of the bands often exacerbates the very things they’re trying to get outlawed. Where do they think the rubber comes from? What do they think will happen to it? And who do they think makes it?’

Mr. Cameron has admitted that he’ll be going easy on the wrist bands in the near future. ‘I’ve learnt my lesson, ‘ he said. ‘In the future, I’ll be having them specially made by my man in Knightsbridge. It’s clear that my body doesn’t tolerate this cheap foreign rubber, so it’ll be nothing less than worsted or tweed from now on.’

Apress conference called to announce the Liberal Democrats’ national badger initiative was reduced to a farce as leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, refused to answer questions addressed to him by the assembled media. The cracks are clearly beginning to show in the normally implacable leader, who spent the majority of the session staring 100 meters into the distance and mumbling ‘wait for it!’ before promising to ‘go on the “B” of “BANG”’.

His reticence came after he been asked if he thought a ’spade or a shovel the most humane way to do a badger in’. Sir Menzies at first suggested a ‘baton’ but refused to be drawn any further, preferring to leave it to his deputy in charge of wildlife, Lembit Opik, to announce plans to remove unwanted badgers by transporting them by air to deserted Scottish islands.

‘For too long, badgers have been unable to afford low cost air travel,’ said Mr. Opik, ‘but we, in the Lib Dems, aim to change this. When people say that badgers can walk, then we say that this is the same old muddled thinking and why can’t they fly? We want to make life better for badgers across the nation. Better now and better in the future.’

Mr. Opik scoffed at suggestions that the policy announcement was linked to his newly launched airline and the fact that aviation commentators have suggested that his planes are too small for human cargo. ‘This is about the badgers,’ said Mr. Opik. ‘And as far as my critics are concerned, I say that they’re BANG out of order!’ With that, Sir Menzies was off. He sprinted down the aisle in a time of eleven minutes, twenty two seconds, and was last seen demanding a winner’s medal from the conductor on the 820 bus to Cowley Street.

The BBC look to incur the wrath of the tabloids with the latest announcement from their Light Entertainment Department. Producers of Strictly Come Dancing have decided to radically change things for the next series by incorporating the UK’s fastest growing type of dancing: pole dancing. ‘Well, my loves, it’s what the punters like,’ said Bruce Forsyth, demonstrating his moves in a strip joint in London’s Soho. In front of watching journalists, Brucie shouted ‘Nice to see you!’ before flipping himself upsidedown and showing everybody one of his trademark ‘Brucie bonuses’.

Strictly Pole Dancing will see the ninety seven year old entertainer gyrate against a pole for only the second time in his seventy-two years in showbiz. ‘It takes me right back to when I was starting out on the Generation Game, it really does,’ he explained. ‘You see, my loves, pole dancing is a bit like dancing with the lovely Anthea Redfen, it really is. Weren’t her frocks lovely? They really were, but she was a bit of a stick…’

Asked if he enjoyed trying out the latest dance craze, Bruce admitted it wasn’t his favourite. ‘I’m still a bit old fashioned, I really am. You see I’m a foxtrot man. Rubbing myself up against a pole might sound like a lot of fun, but it doesn’t half make my g-string ride up. And let me tell you ladies, when you’re my age, it might ride up but you’re not sure when it’s going to come back down again.’