Jesus Founded Glastonbury Festival, Claims Scotsman

The Son of God visited Britain and built a small world music stage at Glastonbury with the aid of His father, Joseph of Arimathea, according to a new film which stretches the meaning of 'documentary' further than ever before.

In the film 'And Did Those Feet', Scottish minister Dr Gormless Strachan cites a letter to the Pope, written in 597AD, in which St Augustine specifically mentions that a bald, ruddy-cheeked farmer he found lying in a ditch and reeking of fermented apple juice had told him that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a small platform in the middle of his grazing pasture was constructed by Jesus Himself, and that the teenage Christ had performed various Aramaic chants to an appreciative audience of Celts, oxen and a mystic druid selling herbal remedies from the back of a dung-cart.

"The rude yokel also doth solemnly vouchsafe that the middens dug by Our Blessed Redeemer did sorely tax the nostrils of all present," wrote St Augustine. "Except the druid, who did preach unto the gathering that the foul stench was beneficial for the roses of the field. It pleased them greatly, therefore, to tumble the heathen into the stinking ordure and thereupon to ask him to speak thus again. And the Lord was glad in His heart."

"Well, of such did he say, Thine Eminence," concluded the venerated saint. "Draw thine own conclusions."

"This letter is concrete evidence that Jesus came to Britain - and, as a lecturer in the history of architecture, I certainly know concrete when I see it," shouted Dr Strachan, who lectures at Edinburgh University although possibly not for much longer.

"If somebody was wanting to learn about the spirituality and thinking not just of the Jews but also the classical and Greek world, he would have come to Britain, which was the centre of learning at the time," exclaimed director/producer Ted Gullible. "He certainly wouldn't have learned much about Judaism from growing up in Palestine, and nor would he have picked up anything meaningful about classical values as he slowly walked the entire length of the Roman Empire over a period of several months, passing through such cesspools of ignorance as Athens and Rome."

"No, at that time all the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom in the world was being done by a manky bunch of violent piss-artists wallowing in their own filth on a boggy island just past the farthest reaches of civilisation," he insisted.

"If Fox Channel buy this, my next historical documentary will prove that a Lancaster bomber really did crash on the moon," vowed Dr Strachan. "This legend was mentioned in the Dark Ages of Thatcher by that impeccably impartial recorder of events, The Sport - and if you look closely at this precious fragment of the original document, you can just make out an 82-inch pair of tits which prove its authenticity as a source document."

"It's criminal that the MoD still refuses to send a rescue helicopter to pick up the crew," he added. "Our brave boys deserve better."

Mandelson Invents Socialism

The business secretary, Lord Mandelson, is said by Labour Party insiders to be eagerly fleshing out the details of a radical new political theory he has just thought up, which he is calling 'socialism'.

The former European Commissioner for Trade tentatively announced the first of his theories today - suggesting, in a speech to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders which was received in hostile silence, that an industry which relentlessly churns out thousands of new cars every day, simply to create an artificial demand for vehicles which people cannot afford and do not need, might not actually be the smartest thing that mankind has ever dreamed up.

"If that evil commie pervert isn't stopped - and fast - pretty soon he won't just be suggesting that replacing your car every two years simply because you're bored with it might not be the best use of the planet's dwindling resources. There's a very real danger that he might dare to question the whole principle of rampant consumerism," growled a Ford executive. "And from there, it's only a short step to entertaining wholesale doubts about the necessity of the artificial monetary system which underpins this unrestricted capitalist system which we all take absolutely for granted."

"Mammon help us all if that happens," he added.

"Kill him," screamed a senior BMW director. "Kill him now, before he infects anyone else with this vile disease."

Meanwhile, staff at a London graveyard report that the body of Herbert Morrison, one of the stalwarts of the Labour movement and Baron Mandelson's grandfather, is revolving more slowly than at any time in the last 12 years.

Police Deny Arresting The Innocent To Add Them To Illegal Database

Police chiefs in England and Wales have angrily denied claims made in Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear? - a report published today by the Human Genetics Commission - that officers were arresting innocent citizens on the slightest of legal pretexts, simply to get as many people as possible onto the national DNA database.

"This is plainly wrong," said a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers. "If it were so, we'd be arresting the Justice Secretary - and, for that matter, ourselves - for keeping the database up and running, despite a ruling last year from the European Court of Human Rights that retaining the profiles of anybody released without charge is illegal."

"Having said that, with Christmas round the corner, people should be aware that the eating of mince pies on Christmas Day has been against the law in England since Cromwell's time," he went on. "We shall also be cracking down on those who callously stick stamps on upside down, improvise home-made devices for sliding on ice or snow, or wantonly break eggs open at the pointy end."

"And I say this to the so-called 'ladies' who openly eat chocolate on public transport, and the sociopathic taxi drivers who neglect to ask their passengers if they have smallpox," he added. "We know who you are, and where you live. These evil desperadoes can shortly expect to receive their just desserts - namely, a jab in the arm in the middle of the night."

Thatcher's Portrait Immortalised In Number Ten For Future Prime Ministers To Abuse

Margaret Thatcher was today back in Number 10 Downing Street, as PM Gordon Brown's guest of honour at the unveiling of a portrait of her smug, hated visage.

Whereas portraits of two previous prime ministers, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, hang on the walls of No.10, Baroness Thatcher's detestable face breaks with tradition by being painted on a Spacehopper.

"I am more than happy to be the first British Prime Minister to be able to sit at my desk, raise my head from my hands and look upon the sour, arrogant features of that awful harridan leering back at me," said Mr Brown. "And it will give me particular pleasure to go down in history as the first British Prime Minister to rise from my desk with a howl of rage and - on behalf of generations of British citizens who will be paying the price of her petty, vindictive evisceration of the nation's industrial profits base - kick her sneering face all around the room until I fall to the floor in a state of sated exhaustion."

Baroness Thatcher did not make a speech, as she has long since retreated behind impenetrable mental walls, which she uses to block out the increasingly-obvious results of her pig-headed policy of shutting down British industries - or, if they had been nationalised on the grounds that they were too essential to the sound running of the nation to be left in the hands of greedy profiteers, flogging them off for a song to her greedy, profiteering friends.

There have already been calls from Labour politicians staring down the throat of imminent unemployment for the spacehopper portrait to be made widely available to disgruntled voters.

"This could be the cheap, feelgood gimmick that wins us another term in the trough- whoops, I mean office," said disgraced Labour MP Andrew Dismore.

Metropolitan Police Settle de Menezes Family Compensation Claim With Magnificent Sombrero

The long-running pursuit of justice for their executed relative, Jean Charles de Menezes, has finally ended after the family were offered a splendidly-oversized sombrero by Metropolitan Commissioner Sir Kim Jong-Stephenson.

"A big straw hat may not seem like much by way of compensation for the state-sanctioned murder of an innocent electrician, or for the subsequent travesty of justice in which the trigger-happy incompetents who were responsible for his death got off scot-free," said Sir Kim. "But you have to remember that the standards of life are very different in Brazil, where these nuts come from. Most Brazilians live on a knife-edge of poverty and insecurity, under a remote, isolated government that has neither the resources or inclination to provide a decent safety net for those in need of support, preferring instead to line the pockets of a small wealthy clique."

"Actually, now I come to think of it, maybe the standards of life in Brazil aren't so very different after all," he mused. "Perhaps we could run to a nice, brightly-coloured poncho as well. I'll ask the lads for a whip-round."

$350,000 Wacko Glove Ideal For This Deserving One-Armed Beggar I Know, Claims Caring HK Capitalist

Mega-wealthy Hong Kong businessman Tossman Ma says that a tawdry white glove - once the property of disturbing fantasist Wackson Jackson - which he bought today at auction for $350,000 will make a world of difference to the disabled street beggar who sits dolefully outside his corporate headquarters every day.

"Every morning, when I go to work, this poor one-armed pauper looks up mournfully and shakes his begging bowl at me," explained Mr Ma. "Unfortunately I don't carry a wallet - it would rather spoil the hang of my jacket - so it really cuts me up to have to stride past him, pretending he doesn't exist. Now, though, I can send my PA out to drop this glove into his bowl when it arrives in the post. Imagine how glad he'll be of a well-padded glove, sleeping rough on the streets on a cold night. My troubled conscience can finally rest easy. Hey, I'm just a really caring guy."

The rhinestone-studded golfing glove was famously worn by the late Wackson when he first amazed the easily pleased by sliding along backwards onstage in 1983.

"Obviously, some smelly old tramp won't have much use for a couple of dozen worthless rhinestones, so I'll have those removed and auctioned separately as genuine Wackson artifacts," beamed Mr Mad. "With a bit of luck, I should double my investment."

"Why are you all looking at me like that?" he added.

$134,000 Umbrella Stand Ideal For This Deserving Three-Legged Elephant I Know, Claims Second Caring Capitalist

A nondescript umbrella stand once owned by the late rag-trade queen Yves Saint-Laurent was sold for £134,000 to an anonymous, caring rich bastard who says he will be donating it to a deserving elephant amputee which he often hears rummaging through the bins in the service area of his exclusive residential block, hoping to find stale buns.

"Mon Dieu, my 'eart goes out to zat poor three-legged elephant," said the secret bidder. "I 'ave often thought of chucking 'eem a stale croissant from ze penthouse balcony after entertaining friends to one of my legendary banquets - mais, naturellement, a successful businessman like me 'as to ensure zat all of 'ees 'ouse'old waste ees safely compacted and shredded. For security reasons, bien sûr."

"Actuellement, zees particular item of 'allway furniture, she ees not a hollow elephant's foot as such - she is earthenware," laughed the buyer. "Mais zut alors! ze irony of an elephant trying to 'obble around wiz ze aid of ze umbrella stand! Comme c'est drôle, n'est-ce pas?"