£600,000 Bionic Arm To Increase Government Efficiency The government has finally introduced the recommendations made by the recent efficiency study into the workings of the Deputy Prime Minister’s office. The most radical change is the introduction of a new £600,000 bionic arm which officials say will ensure that at least 50% more work gets done by the Deputy Prime Minister each day.

John Prescott had his first trial of the arm last week and is said to have been impressed by its versatility as he tested its capabilities doing a variety of normal everyday tasks, such as undoing buttons, squeezing melons, and pulling up his socks.

‘The only problem is that arm seems to have a life of its own,’ one source inside the department told us. ‘That’s not too bad but his other two arms also have minds of their own which makes it quite difficult for those us working close to him. We’ve all started to call him Dr. Octopus after the villain in Spiderman but we’ve given up hoping their might be a web slinger who can defeat him.’

ITV have cancelled a new series of ‘Wish You Were Here…’ after it emerged that a recent activity holiday in Afghanistan left mild manner presenter Judith Chalmers believing she was a fanatical member of al Quaida.

‘It was a terrible mistake,’ said a source close to the show. ‘We were meant to be looking into adventure holidays for the over 55s when somebody handed Judith a brochure advocating Islamic radicalisation. The next time we saw her, she’d become adept at using rocket propelled grenades and was training the Taliban in how to apply cheek blusher in combat situations.’

Chalmers was rushed back to the UK where she underwent a month long process of deprogramming.

‘It was a holiday with plenty of adventure and lots of fun things to do,’ said the ever-professional presenter, ‘but I would recommend that you book off season when the weather’s a little cooler and there’s less chance you’ll be rigged up to ten pounds of semtex and detonated in a busy street.’

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Tony Blair has promised that gun law will be strengthened in the coming year.

‘Don’t people understand what gun law means?’ asked the Prime Minister in a speech to road users in London on Sunday. ‘It means I have the gun and you lot will do what I bloody well tell you to do! But isn’t that the problem with this country? Too many people have too many complaints. Well, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair has had about enough of being told what to do… He’s had enough of being other people’s patsy. I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’

First of Mr. Blair’s list of priorities is the promise he’s made to personally contact everybody who has signed a petition against road pricing. He is confident that he can change people’s minds. ‘I can be quite persuasive,’ the PM joked. ‘People usually have a change of heart once they’ve said hello to my leeetle friend…’ His little friend was unavailable for comment as it’s believed Hazel Blears is busily working on government plans to reduce the number of obscure film quotes used by unregulated websites.

Book groups up and down the country have been thrown into chaos after a large chain of independent bookshops inadvertently made Mein Kampf the Richard & Judy’s Book Club book of the week. The mistake was only discovered after Hitler’s semi-autography leapt to the top of the thriller charts.

‘This was a most unfortunate mistake,’ admitted bookshop owner Mrs Phyllis Gryce-Sedge who was the first to spot the mistake when one of her reading groups demanded schnaps for their mid-morning drink and asked for their reading corner to be annexed to form part of the greater German motherland. ‘Unfortunately, many of our reading groups have already gone ahead and have turned ever so slightly fascist as a result,’ she said.

‘It was even better than a Jilly Cooper,’ said one jackbooted member of a Norwich reading group who held a rally in the town centre last Tuesday. ‘But I did think it could have done with a little more romance. Such a nice boy needed to meet the right girl at the end.’

Meanwhile, Sir Richard Madeley has expressed his outrage at the mix-up. ‘Richard & Judy’s book club is meant to represent the very best books we’ve been paid to publicise,’ he said. ‘Did I just say “paid”? Sorry, sorry, sorry! I mean, they’re the best books that we discover ourselves through our own independent reading and nobody does it for us because I’m a man who reads at least five books a week and know everything these is to know about books. Strewth! Do I go through them? I’m a real bookworm… And so’s Judy.’

Meanwhile, book shops are rushing to fix the mistake. ‘We’re eager to help all our customers who have bought this terrible book,’ explained Mrs. Gryce-Sedge. ‘People only need to come into any of our stores and cite our Jeffrey Archer policy which means they’ll get their money back and a complimentary course of trauma councilling.’

The BBC Archives have provided TV scholars with many unique finds in recent years but few can be as rare as the newly discovered footage of the 1957 Comic Relief.

The black and white film runs for only two minutes but contains a rare TV appearance of Tony Hancock who is seen asking the audience to give money for starving kipper sellers in Grimsby. He is then followed by John Le Mesurier and Irene Handl who add their support to the cause before the three of them are joined onstage by newsreaders of the day in a tribute to the golden age of the Hollywood musical.

‘Hancock only did three Comic Reliefs and this was his last,’ explained Hancock expert, Dr. Richard Babababapbabah of Cheam University. ‘He admitted that hated wearing red noses and thought them the lowest form of comedy.’

The footage will be shown this Friday on this year’s Comic Relief, before Graham Norton and Russell Brand are joined onstage by newsreaders in a tribute to the golden age of the Hollywood musical.

Clearly hoping to regain some of the prestige it lost during the recent outbreaks of bird flu, food company Bernard Matthews has volunteered to help feed skinny models at London Fashion Week.

The size-0 models have been banned from many of the world’s biggest fashion shows, but London’s designers have had no such restriction. However, Bernard Matthews believe they have the solution.

‘We’ve got some old aircraft hangers free at the moment,’ said the company’s founder from his home in Norfolk. ‘We could easily get five thousand models into each of ‘em. Nothing but the best for them. Sawdust changed every week to collect their droppings and we’d feed them every day with some high protein seed. Get a bit of flesh on the bone and then it’s off to our meat rendering plant where we could turn them into delicious meals. Booty-ful.’