If It Looks Like a Duchy and Quacks, It Must Be The Duchy of Cornwall

Prince Charles has come under attack from a leading academic for selling a bucket of shit to constipated dupes at £10 a throw.

Edvard Ernst - professor of complementary medicine at the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter - condemned the Duchy of Cornwall for exploiting a gullible public at a time of hardship, saying: "Prince Charles contributes to the ill health of the nation by pretending we can all overindulge, then take his tincture and be fine again."

'Duchy Herbal Detox Tincture' - containing artichoke, dandelion and rabbit poo - is on sale at Boots and Waitrose, where it is being snapped up by waddling, shit-choked royalists with more money than sense who are desperate for their first dump of the year.

Prince Charles was unavailable to comment on his move into the quack market, as he was busy playing with the Chilean Navy's boats. However, Andrew Baker - Chief Executive of Duchy Originals, described the overpriced tub of compost as a natural aid to digestion, saying: "it is not - and has never been described as - a medicine, remedy or cure for any disease."

"If these women weren't systematically wrecking their digestive tracts in the first place by slavishly pursuing every stupid new Daily Mail diet fad, in the vain hope that they can somehow restore their sagging tits and arses to irresisitable heights of nubile desirability," he added, "Then there wouldn't be a market for shite like this in the first place, would there? You can't really call it exploitation if these middle-aged, middle-class idiots are just begging to be exploited."

He went on to add that the Duchy Originals range would soon be expanded to include several exciting new items of bare-faced quackery, including:

- The Queen Mum's Bona Fide 100% Organic Wrinklebuster (ingredients: lard, gin and tonic);

- Her Majesty's Crock of Homeopathic Hair Balm, available in a variety of man-teasing tones (ingredients: Fantasy Brown - slurry; Pearly White: flour; Battleship Grey: whatever's lying around the farmyard);

- St Diana's Anti-Ageing Extract of Urine (ingredients: recycled newspaper articles);

- Camilla's Patent Slack Fanny Restorer (ingredients: tobacco, mechanically-recovered bull semen, tar, nicotine).