Make-Up Wearing Neanderthals 'Not Halfwits', Say Archaeologists: 'More Like Vain, Self-Absorbed Airheads'

We may have to revise our preconceived opinions of the Neanderthal branch of humanity, say archaeologists who have discovered evidence that our Stone Age rivals used make-up to adorn themselves.

The team discovered shells marked with pigment residues at two sites in southern Spain, which they claim form compelling evidence that modern humans were not the only hominid species capable of vanity.

"Our findings conclusively demolish the old myths about hairy, halfwitted ape-men and women," insisted Professor Joao Zilhao of Bristol University. "We can now picture a touchingly-familiar Neanderthal domestic scene, with the male of the cavehold exasperatedly calling for his mate to hurry up and get ready before the bison herd moves on, as she blithely carries on applying her eyeliner with a club."

The archaeological world is now considering the implications of the discovery regarding the extinction of the Neanderthal race.

"Could it be that these tribes died out because they ended up spending all their time applying primitive wax strips to remove their thick, matted body hair?" mused Professor Tony Robinson, Emeritus Chair of Anthropology at More4 University. "Or were they all stung to death by angry bees? Find out after the break!"

Selfish Salt Thieves Prompt Councils To Retaliate In Kind

Irresponsible motorists have been raiding council stockpiles of salt, often emptying local storage bins minutes after they have been refilled, according to reports from several council depots around the snowbound country.

"Happen these irresponsible folk are literally putting lives at risk," commented Councillor Al Cock, as North Yorkshire County Council took the precaution of transferring 400 tonnes from a remote, little-known rural depot to a more secure location in Skipton which shouldn't be too difficult to find.

Meanwhile, hundreds of householders in the region have reported hearing strange sounds in their homes in the middle of the night, and coming downstairs to find dayglo-jacketed council workmen rifling through kitchen cupboards and escaping through the window with their salt shakers.

"Happen tha's got to fight fire with fire," responded Cllr Cock defiantly, when the allegations were put to him.

Harman To Use Discrimination Laws Against Anyone Commenting On Her Inability To Drive

Equality minister Harriet Harman has warned that anyone who utters a single word about her £350 fine for driving without due care and attention will face the full fury of Britain's anti-discrimination laws and receive up to five years in prison if found guilty of harassing her over the nine penalty points on her driving licence.

Ms Harman - who avoided picking up an additional three points for using her mobile phone whilst driving, thus escaping an automatic ban, because the latter charge was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service on the grounds of her jolly importance - angrily warned Britain's men to refrain from making the slightest disparaging remark about women drivers, or face the consequences.

Ms Harman, whose jolly importance to the well-being of the nation also includes her role as leader of the House of Commons, already had six points on her licence for two counts of thinking the speed limit only applied to ordinary little people.

The incident took place in July, when Mr Harman collided with a parked car whilst attempting the extremely difficult manoeuvre of driving her ministerial Rover out of a parking space whilst yapping away nineteen to the dozen. The owner of the stationary vehicle saw the collision from his flat, and telephoned the police as she drove away.

"Next time Harriet Harperson wants to conduct her constituency business," he told reporters after the verdict was delivered, "She might want to drop her ministerial car in one of the extra-wide parking bays which are a feature of China's new pink-painted women-only car park, and then catch a flight back to London."

"Or she could just make Britain's roads safer by staying in China," he added, moments before an armed response equality monitoring unit led by newly-honoured Asst Commissioner Cressida Dick burst in and shot him.

TV Manufacturers Threaten To Bring Godawful 3D Crap Right Into Your Living Room

All of the big exhibitors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today threatened to unleash evil 3D televisions on the public, if sales of their defective, unnecessary products failed to pick up sharpish.

"You might have thought that the awful sight of Jedward's smug, vacuous faces filling the wall of your front room was bad enough," warned a horrible, horrible bastard from Sony. "But I promise you now that Simon Cowell's next abomination will be inches from your big fat face unless you fuck off to Curry's right now and slap a broadband-enabled e-book Reader, a BluRay-compatible phone and a blog-ready camera on your groaning credit card."

"Well, what are you waiting for?" he snapped.

"Our exciting new GT240 Social Android phone will be in the shops in April," threatened an insufferable prick from LG. "Anybody who hasn't pre-ordered one by next Friday will come downstairs one morning to find their living space filled by Jeremy Kyle's enormous floating head. And don't think for a minute that we wouldn't dare."

Facebook Cures Breast Cancer

The little-known medical condition known to specialists as breast cancer was today eradicated forever, after millions of breast owners united on social networking site Facebook to find a cure for the disease by telling everyone what colour their bra was.

Millions of stupid men logging on today were greeted by an apparently-inexplicable welter of one-word status updates, mainly 'black' or 'white'. Stupid, selfish men attempting to seek clarification were met with a hail of disapproval from irate breast owners, and castigated for their emotionally-stunted callousness.

Meanwhile, thousands of middle-aged housewives desperately tried to convince their friends that they were insatiable sexual athletes, by claiming that they were wearing a red bra.

The campaign - the inspired product of a brain-storming, nostril-destroying all-nighter at award-winning marketing solutions agency PoLLy WhaLLey DudaLL - has single-handedly succeeded in destroying the deadly cancer where decades of medical research and screening failed.

"The key conceptualising element was - if you'll deign to forgive the inescapable deploymentation of arcane marketing jargon here - 'Awareness'," said head sniffer Crispin WhaLLey, resplendent in the red tie and glasses of his profession. "Millions of innocent breast owners have been quite literally dying of tit rot every day, simply because they failed to prioritise the roll-out of a quasi-psychological bra strategy which identified recognition of fabric colour optimisation techniques as the essential driving force behind their perceptions of their physical selves as quintessentially sexual entities."

"By empowering them to confront the appropriacy of their scaffolding choices, through the viral co-optionment of Facebook as a meme-distribution analogue," he continued, "Our guerrilla campaign has ensured that no woman will ever again experience troubling concerns about the latent capacity of her funbags to send her to an early grave."

Linguistic experts say that Mr WhaLLey's statement may take years to decipher. However, the medical establishment agreed that the miracle of Facebook had indeed cured breast cancer forever - just as it has brought about an end to wars, racism, natural disasters and all the other horrid things in the world.

"My bra is blue," posted a confused woman, via mobile. "Are my tits going to drop off? God in heaven help me."

Millions of stupid, insensitive men have also been posting that last sentence to their Facebook profiles, or selfishly demanding that women meekly surrender their now-redundant mobile mammography trailers for conversion, to save their useless, ugly gonads.

Man Announces Intention to Retire

A man approaching his fiftieth birthday today stunned the world by announcing his decision to retire.

The man, who has a customer-facing job in the media, said he would not be renewing his contract with his employer when it comes up for renewal in six months' time.

It is thought that the man - who has been doing his job for thirteen years now - has managed to save enough from his salary to enable him to live out his remaining years quietly in relative comfort.

The man's employers said they were sad to see him leave, and wished him a happy retirement. Another man who works in a similar position within the organisation is likely to be promoted to fill the vacancy.

Great God! This Is An Awful Place

As the last vestiges of infrastructure finally collapsed today in the snowy desolation formerly known as Great Britain, the first polar bears arrived to chase down and eat the few huddled survivors of the nightmarish end of civilisation.

Ice rafts, floating up Britain's estuaries on the incoming tides and bearing the relentless Arctic predators, were sighted by scattered bands of foraging Subaru drivers as they hunted desperately amid the drifting snows, chasing rumours of a mythical supermarket with remaining stocks of sliced bread.

"Once they get a whiff of human being, you're as good as dead," moaned a haggard, frostbitten woman who used to be a teacher until the nation's schools were crushed by the encroaching glaciers. "I've tried masking my deliciously meaty scent by emptying a bottle of Davidoff Cool Water for Women over myself, but that fuzzy bastard seems to be gaining on me all the same."

In the barren wastelands of London, tusk-wielding Labour backbenchers holed up in the Palace of Westminster - now visible only by the clockface of Big Ben poking forlornly out of a mountain of snow - mounted a desperate challenge to the authority of hapless tribal chieftain Gordon the Brown, in a last-ditch attempt to propitiate the Wendigo, the mysterious wind-walking god whose anger has all but extirpated their tribe from the face of their once green and pleasant land, with a blood sacrifice.

Meanwhile, Islam4UK reasserted its intention to hold a trek across the mile-thick ice-sheet covering Wootton Bassett to raise awareness of the terrible plight of Muslims in warm countries, despite the threat of being killed and eaten by a rival EDL hunting party.

Dubai Proudly Unveils World's Tallest Folly

The world's tallest monument to man's hubris, the 2,716ft Burj Khalifi, was opened yesterday in Dubai - dwarfing the previous record holder, the ill-fated liner RMS Titanic, whose paltry 883ft hull could comfortably fit upright on top of its two sister ships inside the enormous, pointless edifice.

Towering above the tiny, bankrupt state of Dubai, the gigantic irrelevance will stand as a futile, half-empty monument to the horribly-misplaced financial confidence of mankind for generations to come.

"In future, our nomadic grandchildren will be drawn to our deserted city from up to sixty miles away, attracted by its glinting glass cladding. They will shake their heads sadly, as they ask themselves what sort of irresponsible clowns could have spent $1.5bn they didn't have on such a colossal vanity project," boasted Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rash Al-Along. "They will scale its empty lift shafts, and peer out in amazement over the scrub-covered ruins of extravagantly silly artificial islands that look like a map of the world, a stylised palm tree and a huge dollar sign."

"I can only hope, in all humility, that they will also pause to beg Allah to forgive us, at the world's highest unfurnished mosque on the 158th floor," he added.

Naïve Icelandic Bumpkin-in-Chief Actually Believes All That Democracy Guff

Iceland's rustic president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, today acknowledged a petition - signed in a matter of days by a quarter of the entire electorate - by vetoing a parliamentary decision to borrow $5bn to cover the tiny island nation's bank debts and charge it to the taxpayers.

On hearing the news, the UK government - to whom much of the money is owed - reacted with incandescent fury.

"What in the name of Christ prompted this Nordic village idiot to overthrow a perfectly reasonable business decision taken by the nation's elected career politicians and put the nation's finances to some kind of yokel referendum?" spluttered a puce-faced Gordon Brown. "Britain desperately needs the billions lost by Iceland's stupid, irresponsible bankers to replace an insignificant fraction of the hundreds of billions lost by our own stupid, irresponsible bankers."

"This dangerous democratic experiment absolutely must not be allowed to happen," concurred business secretary Lord Mandelson. "Who knows what might happen if a quarter of the British population, instead of moaning harmlessly on Facebook about how shit everything is, took it upon themselves to march up to the head of state's official residence, knock on the door, apologise for interrupting their viewing and give them a piece of their collective mind? Well, they'd be arrested or shot before they got within shouting distance, actually, but that's beside the point."

"Unlike quaint, unsophisticated Iceland, of course, as a mature democracy Britain has plenty of high walls, railings, police and armed troops to keep the peasantry away from their unelected head of state, who has neither the political power nor the will to change things anyway," commented chancellor Alistair Darling. "So you can forget any notions of giving vent to your feelings about your elected representatives letting the banks off scot-free and making you and your children pay for their cock-ups for the next fifty years or so."

"Every few years, we kindly let you decide which pack of self-serving MPs can suck up to the world of high finance in the hope of a few juicy directorships when they eventually get given the boot," he added. "That's quite enough democracy for Britain, thank you very much."

Reports that the UK is considering punitive measures against its northerly neighbour - including a puffin embargo and threatening to perform the blood eagle on Plymouth Argyle midfielder Kári Árnáson - are, as yet, unconfirmed.

Serious Risk of Losing Sight, Legs and Kidneys To Diabetes Is Well Worth Giving Up Fags For, Scream Medics

New research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which demonstrates that smokers who give up their evil, murderous habit are more than twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes than if they keep puffing away at their foul cancer sticks, has been angrily denounced by stürmbanndoktors as 'sodding inconvenient'.

US researchers from Johns Hopkins University, who made the deeply unhelpful discovery that quitters are 70% more likely to develop the condition than lifelong non-smokers, have said they are very sorry for revealing an awkward fact, and begged not to be struck off or used as experimental test subjects.

"What happens is that smokers who kick their filthy but appetite-suppressing habit rapidly bloat up like walruses at an all-you-can-eat seal buffet," said a goose-stepping official of the British National Socialist Medical Association. "And once they become hideous fat bastards, of course, they fall into the high-risk category for type 2 diabetes and serve them right. They can then look forward to a life-long likelihood of kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes, blindness caused by glaucoma or macular retinopathy, urinary tract infections and multiple amputations. So what? Obviously, the simple answer is to quit eating as well as smoking."

"I really can't see the problem here," he added. "Heil Hippocrates."

Women's Mags: 'G-Spot Certainly Does Exist - We've Been Using It For Years'

The existence of the elusive G-spot - which was called into question today by a research team from King's College London, who claim it is nothing but a figment of the imagination promoted by women's magazines and sex therapists - has been angrily asserted by women's magazines and sex therapists.

"Girls! How dare these men - and they must be men, 'cos they're from King's College - deny you your lovely G-spot?" demanded Cosmopolitan's chief frigologist, Barbarella X. Tatic. "We've been stimulating women's G-spots for decades. Just listen to yourselves moaning with orgasmic pleasure at the very mention of the things that drive us wild - words like 'size 0', 'anti-ageing', 'shoes', 'cosmetic', 'bargain' and 'chocolatier'."

"Excuse me for a minute, I've come over all funny," she added. "See? See?"

Marie-Claire's top sextician Roxanne Summers also insisted that the G-spot was real.

"The existence of a part of the body which sends women into paroxysms of ecstasy has long been known to the advertising industry," she pointed out. "Look at ads from the dark ages of 1930s - the only things women were thought to be find remotely pleasurable were regular bowel movements and a squeaky-clean toilet. But that all changed when ad-agency scientists discovered the existence of gullibility."

"Look, we all know that even the most expensive anti-wrinkle miracle products are nothing more than cheap aqueous cream and a bit of scent," she went on. "But what you have to remember is that women really don't want to get any older. It's the same with their other obsessions. Women want to eat cream pastries and chocolate all day long, yet they also crave the figure of a praying mantis. Hence they'll jump at any new diet fad, no matter how daft, as long as it doesn't tell them to eat less and exercise more."

"Fifty years of extensive market research has proved the existence of the gullibility spot beyond question," she laughed. "It's that spongy thing between the ears. No doubt about it."

"Next they'll be saying that, deep down, macho men who act like complete bastards are really just covering up a caring, sensitive nature," commented King's College researcher Dr Martha Strangelove drily. "So the G-spot exists, does it? My aunt Fanny."

New Old Evidence in Mull of Kintyre Crash 'Isn't New Evidence At All Because It's Old Evidence, See?' Claims MoD

The Ministry of Defence has discounted new evidence - which the BBC claims to have discovered - concerning the crash of an RAF Chinook helicopter full of intelligence staff in 1994, which points the finger of blame at defective engine management software.

One internal document, written by experts at the MoD's aircraft testing centre at Boscombe Down nine months before the doomed machine crashed on Mull of Kintyre, killing all on board, states unequivocally that the Fadec software was "positively dangerous". Another, written on the day of the crash, said it was "imperative" that the RAF "should cease operations" with the Chinook HC Mk.2.

Following the disaster, both an RAF Board of Inquiry and a Fatal Accident Inquiry were unable to establish the exact cause of the crash. However, a couple of RAF Air Marshals subsequently decided that the media were still asking inconvenient questions and that the two pilots - Flt Lts John Tapper and Richard Cook - were conveniently dead, and therefore unable to deny that they were probably playing a drunken game of Strip the Willow or something in the cockpit, when they should have been looking out for small but extremely solid islands.

However, the MoD is so far refusing to reconsider the verdict, claiming that the new evidence does not warrant re-examination of the case.

"This evidence is nothing new, as the relatives of the scapegoats - sorry, useless aircrew - have been claiming for donkey's years that the Fadec engine management software was to blame," said a RAF spokesman. "For that matter, most of this so-called 'new' evidence was published in Computer Weekly last June. And old evidence isn't new evidence - it's old evidence, which obviously isn't any kind of evidence at all, do you understand?"

"Look, I knew Richard Tapper and John Cook personally, and I can tell you for a fact that they were a couple of daredevil headcases who never once climbed into a cockpit sober," added the young pilot officer. "So just drop it, OK?"

He then offered to arrange transport home for the reporters present, in a Chinook HC Mk.2 which just happened to be waiting outside.

Released Hostage Eager To Hear of Britain's Successes Over Last Two Years

Freed Iraq hostage Peter Moore has said he is "delighted" to be free after 946 days in captivity, explaining how he is keenly "looking forward to spending the coming days and weeks catching up on all the things I've missed over the past two-and-a-half years."

Foreign Office staff are carefully debriefing the 36-year-old computer expert, in order to ease the difficult transition from powerless captive in a chaotic, lawless state to free citizen of the United Kingdom.

"We started off by trying to explain the point of Twitter to Mr Moore," said Cadogan de Vere Carlton-Browne of the F.O. "But we quickly realised the enormity of the task, so we've gone back to things which are a bit easier to take in - like the replacement of one buggy, bloated version of Windows by another. He finds that comfortingly familiar."

Trauma specialists say that the eventual aim of Mr Moore's carefully-planned debriefing is to bring him to a point where he will be psychologically ready to hear that, shortly after his capture in May 2006, Gordon Brown was handed the premiership of the United Kingdom on a plate and went on to preside over the unprecedented bankrupting of a nation which was comfortably riding the crest of an economic wave when he was kidnapped.

"Mr Moore may already be experiencing the 'Stockholm Syndrome', which describes the tendency of hostages to identify with their captors over time," said a senior government head-fixer. "Our fear is that, when he realises the mess the country is now in, he may well leap onto the next plane to Baghdad and beg for asylum."

Twitter In Meltdown As Stephen Fry Signs Off

Popular social yammering site Twitter is teetering on the edge of economic collapse today, after people's polymath Stephen Fry issued a shock statement that he would be refraining from twatting for the next few months. Investors promptly reacted to the loss of Twitter's main user by dumping millions of now-worthless shares.

The legendary actor, wit, writer, comedian, genius, explorer, philosopher, historian, Mac user, occasional Jew, quantum physicist, botty connoisseur, patroniser of Alan Davies and acceptable face of bipolar disorder announced to a shocked world that he was withdrawing from all social activity for the next few months, in order to concentrate all of his vast mental powers on a cheque from his publishers - who have been wondering lately whether he might possibly pull his erudite finger out of his Wildean arse and finally get round to capitalising on the runaway success of Moab Is My Washpot, the first volume of his autobiography.

"Gosh crikey, doesn't time fly, like an innocent young caterpillar masticating furiously - oh come come come come now, shame on you all - on the shiny purple cap of a magnificent cock-shaped rocket on Bonfire Night?" burbled Britain's venerable queen on the brainfart-sharing website. "Yet here am I, frivolously dispensing my bon mots amongst you, my adulatory Twat- academy, free gratis and for - as it seems the vulgar saying goes - absolutely bugger all, when my editor points out - quite correctly, under the circumstances - that he is paying me £7.50 per mot and - as he phrases it with admirably earthy forthrightness - he 'hasn't seen a single frigging word in twelve long sodding years' and expresses his fervent desire to - as he so pithily puts it - 'pack the bastard off to the printers' before he finally succumbs to the leering advances of lecherous old age."

Industry analysts are warning web investors of significant falls in lol, rofl and pmsl over the coming months of Frylessness.

"Alas, alack and Alan Davies! I fear it's adieu, auf wiedersehen, ave atque vale with lols aplenty from your silly old uncle Stephen," chortled the renaissance man who made the role of Kingdom his own whilst rushing round the United States in his mould-breaking travel series, If It's Tuesday Afternoon This Must Be Nebraska. "I'm bumbling offwards to trawl the fusty corridors of my vast cathedral of a brain for any side-splitting anecdotes about Rowan Atkinson or Emma Thompson that haven't already been told by everyone else - or indeed by my humble self on Twitter."