Daily Express Offers 'Free' Coffin For Every Reader

With millions of decent, middle-class English people already lying dead in the streets, their corpses covered by a fine layer of deadly toxic ash, the Daily Express is today offering a free coffin to every reader who would rather not be known to future generations simply as a misshapen, Pompeii-style cast.

"Make no fucking mistake. Every living British thing in Britain will be dead by Monday - with the exception of all the bloody immigrants, who are used to this sort of climate," warned Richard Desmond, the philanthropic, saintly proprietor of Express Newspapers and Television X. "Yes, even I will die an agonised, lingering death, my lungs choked with red-hot volcano spew - because my sodding private jet has been grounded by self-serving health-and-safety jobsworth bastards. That quango-loving cunt Gordon Brown will get a bollocking over this in my papers all next week - and that's a fucking promise, sunshine."

Mr Desmond was then led away to Boujis by two gorgeous, pouting models, to contemplate the remaining hours of his life with atypically hedonistic abandon.

Some Express readers, however, expressed their anger when they discovered that the so-called 'free offer' required them to travel to their nearest participating cemetery and purchase a £25 shovel before they could take possession of their coffin.

"I'm not impressed," moaned Express reader Sid Goebbels, 75. "Although, to be fair, I did get a bonus wedding ring from the coffin's previous occupant. But I bet those EU Hitlers have already ordered our quisling government to give free burials to every illegal immigrant in Britain."

"With a complimentary 21-gun salute, too, I shouldn't wonder," he added. "Is this what I fought a war for? Even if I was only 10 when it ended."

Meanwhile, 250,000 Icelanders are reported to be casually strolling around their exploding country without a care in the world, no doubt chuckling to each other about the imminent cancellation of their enormous debt to the UK - which is now destined, tragically, never to be collected.