Government Tells Joke

As the national mood turned from gloom to childlike delight with the opening of the Millionaire’s Kickabout Show, the government made a commendable effort to join in with the silliness by awarding a CBE to Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Hilariously, the rib-tickling citation suggested that the famous Welsh cleavage has performed some sort of service to the film industry - presumably by marrying doddering Hollywood pensioner Michael Douglas, which could also explain the ‘services to charity’ bit tacked on the end.

The comedy keeps going for page after page, with MBEs for professional northerners Rita and Emily out of Coronation Street; an OBE for John Nettles, for his chameleon-like versatility in creating not one, but two mildly quirky detective roles in a career spanning decades; an MBE in recognition of the unique insights which David Coulthard shares with TV audiences after years spent watching F1 drivers win races as he pootled round after them in a 200mph bathtub; an OBE for acclaimed literary giant James Herbert, the genius behind seminal texts on rats and fog; an MBE for one of the cleavages from ‘Allo ‘Allo; an OBE to the silly bugger who let in the Yank goal that knocked England out of the World Cup in 1950; and, last but not least, an OBE goes to TV’s pretty Professor Brian Cox - although it is not clear whether this is for his efforts to explain brainy stuff to drooling BBC viewers or for playing keyboards with D:ream.

And the laughs aren’t confined to the celebrity world, either! Mrs Freda Challoner, director of HM Revenue and Customs’ Large Business Service, receives a well-deserved CBE for allowing corporates like Tesco to pay however much tax they feel like donating, while Serco’s CEO Christopher Hyman gets one for taking unglamorous services like immigration removal centres and offender tagging, the management of various hospitals and schools, the running of Britain’s ICBM early warning system, and the Docklands Light Railway out of the public sector and turning them into profit-making enterprises for his shareholders. And HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Denis O’Connor, is knighted for his tactful, low-key announcements concerning the numerous failings of Britain’s police forces, ensuring that they receive only the most cursory coverage in the media.

The greatest laugh, however, accompanies Ms Susan Owen, director of the Department for Work and Pensions’ welfare and wellbeing group, who becomes a Companion of the Order of the Bath for ensuring that the wellbeing of those on welfare is afforded as much respect as it receives from the leader-writers of the tabloid press.

England World Cup Team Dedicate Predictably Ignominious Defeat To Troops In Afghanistan

With a touching lack of irony, the England squad has responded to messages of support from serving UK troops by affirming that our brave boys’ and girls’ ongoing effort in Afghanistan is inspiring them to struggle against insuperable odds towards inevitable defeat and a humiliating withdrawal.

“Although I am unable at this time to offer a firm timescale, I am confident that Wayne Rooney and the others - whose names escape me - will at some point in the not-too-distant future be making a low-key return to Britain with their tails between their legs,” promised Fabio Capello. “When that happens, be sure that I will do my best to assure you that something worthwhile was achieved.”

Why Oh Why Isn’t Cameron Sticking Up For Good Old BP, Demands Daily Mail

The prime minister has come under fire for failing to leap to the defence of BP – an international British success story we should all be proud of, according to the increasingly swivel-eyed Daily Mail columnist Alex Bummer.

“If the Cameron coalition fails to silence the verbal abuse and threats of steep financial penalties from President Obama and Congress,” warned Mr Bummer, “This great company could be killed by a thousand cuts, which would be an enormous blow to Britain's economy.”

With BP shares making up one sixth of Britain’s pension and insurance funds, Mr Bummer screamed, any attempt by the sneaky and noticeably black President to hold BP liable for the damage done by the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in history would not only dent the nation’s soaring economy but also hit you – yes, you - squarely in the wallet.

“Not so keen on wiping the oil off that penguin now, are you?” laughed the Mail’s top writer. “What? Penguin, pelican - what’s the difference? Neither of them are in my Observer’s Book Of British Birds, are they? Well, then I rest my case.”

The Untouchable

Today’s newspapers are filled with praise for Sir Terry Greedy, who announced yesterday that he would stepping down from his post as chief executive of Tesco.

“Every little bit he did helped us,” simpered the Sun in a glowing editorial, adding that in his 14 years at the helm, he “showed competition could make the consumer the winner.”

“The PM should phone Mr Tesco,” it concluded.

“If I was to draw up a list of ten people who had most helped the poor in the past few decades,” concurred Tim Montgimmegimmegimme in the Times, “Near the top of my list would be Terry Greedy.”

And the Daily Sieg Mail heaped further praise on the outgoing supermarket supremo, with Alex Bummer maintaining that “if our leaders had one iota of Tesco boss Sir Terry’s drive and flair, Britain wouldn't be in such a mess.”

Impoverished customers who have had to give up their cars to make ends meet, meanwhile, continue to hand over their meagre incomes in densely-packed inner-city Tesco Metro stores to cover the stealthily-increasing cost of the bare necessities required to keep themselves and their families alive.

“Gawd bless yer, Sir Terry,” croaked ragged Zimmer-frame enthusiast Madge Butler, 90. “It warms me heart to know that, thanks to you, I kin buy two loaves of pressed sawdust for juss thirty bob, an’ enjoy the simple pleasure of watchin’ one go all mouldy before I ‘ave time to eat it.”

“And to fink it contains no added sugar, eeva,” she smiled toothlessly. “Cor, juss fink wot ‘e could of done wiv the NHS.”

English Requirement Will Not Apply To Britain’s Lower Orders, Admits May

Whoops of joy echoing from breakfast tables across the home counties at the news that the ability to speak middle-class English would not only be a requirement for staying in the UK, but would be retrospectively applied, abruptly faded as it became apparent that the rule would only be applied to immigrants coming from outside the EU.

Theresa May, the spacesuit-wearing Home Secretary, was announcing plans to make the ability to speak English at a level appropriate to a skilled worker a mandatory visa requirement.

“For a brief, wonderful moment I had a glorious vision of all these awful chavs, those ghastly creatures from Liverpool and the guttural peasants who clutter up the picture-postcard village in Cornwall where I have a perfectly adorable holiday cottage being rounded up with cattle prods, herded into containers and shipped in bulk to China, where they might be put to good use as dam-building material or something,” sighed Nicole Vaux, a corporate image advisor from Henley. “Then I’d be able to rest assured that the house and grounds would be kept absolutely spick and span by some nice, hardworking Poles or Lithuanians for far less wages than those surly yokels, Mr. and Mrs. Warleggan.”

Her friend Pippa Buckmaster, a Harley Street aura consultant, added that her greatest fear was that other countries might implement similar measures.

“After that ghastly parvenu Jim Potter – nothing more than a jumped-up builder - and his plain and frankly blotchy wife Jackie sold up and opened a tacky bar in Lloret del Mar, the whole street held a wine and cheese evening to celebrate,” she explained. “The last thing we want is for them to come crawling back again, no doubt clutching dreadful straw donkeys and wearing half-unravelled sombreros.”

“And if that awful Berlusconi and his gangster crew seriously expect me to learn their silly jibber-jabber before allowing me to enrich Italy’s cultural diversity by retiring to Tuscany, well he can jolly well think again,” she added. “It’s just so petty. As we all know, foreigners understand English perfectly well if you shout at them properly.”

International Rating Agency Refuses Britain A Pound For A Pasty

Influential credit-rating agency Fitch has politely but firmly told Britain to save its breath, after the glassy-eyed wreck of a country shambled up to ask - with a pathetic pretence of false bonhomie - if it could possibly ‘borrow’ a pound or two for a Cornish pasty, as it had been sleeping rough since Sunday.

After Fitch casually remarked that Britain seemed rather better-dressed than your average homeless person, the panhandling nation repeated its plea - doggedly upping its demand to an extra quid for cup of tea. Britain insisted that, OK, the real reason it needed the money was to travel up north to visit its brother, Iceland, who owed it money, and swore on its mother’s grave to pay Fitch back next week.

As Fitch politely declined and moved away, saying it had a bus to catch, Britain shuffled pathetically after it, angrily mumbling, “Ain’t you got any loose change at all? You must have something. Come on, just 50p and I’ll leave you alone. 50p, mate… 50p!”

Noticing that Spain - another notorious local sponger - had noticed the commotion and was lurching over with an alarmingly earnest expression on its face, Fitch made an exaggerated display of checking its watch and strode off as fast as it could walk without actually breaking into a run. As soon as it turned the corner it ducked into a newsagent’s shop, where it wasted five minutes idly flicking through Structured Investment Vehicle Trader before cautiously peering outside to check that the coast was clear.

Later, over a caramel macchiato in Starbucks, Fitch and its friend Moodys agreed that it was gambling addicts like Britain that gave genuinely hard-up countries a bad name.

Frost Too Boring For Politicians, Says Satirist

David Frost, who once said something mildly amusing about Harold Macmillan 47 years ago, has come under fire from a yawning satirist, after tiresomely and all-too-predictably calling today’s politicians and their coalition government “too boring for satire”.

“David Frost has filled my entire lifetime with his tedious droning on and on about how he single-handedly invented satire,” said Nev, the highly self-acclaimed writer, editor and reader of The Nev Filter, “Which does seem more than slightly unfair to pioneering satirists like Peter Cook, Richard Ingrams, Willy Rushton, Gerald Scarfe and the Roman poet Martial. And as for Frost’s entire boring body of work since 1963 – putting two men called Ronald in the same studio for the first time in history, founding London Weekend Rubbish Sitcoms, giving President Nixon the chance to lie his version of the Watergate scandal, changing the face of weather forecasting forever with the huge hair of TV-am’s Wincey Willis, forcing something called a loyd grossman through keyholes, sending people back to sleep on Sunday mornings with Snoozefast With Frost and ending up as al-Jazeera TV’s token infidel, all the while developing a strange, stop-start style of mumbling which has baffled speech therapists and audiences alike into a trance-like stupor – presumably the whole sorry tale has been one long anti-establishment dig of such exquisite subtlety that only an intellect the size of David Frost’s can appreciate it.”

“I’m sorry,” he suddenly shouted, after slumping sideways off his chair. “Where was I? I think I lost track of what I was saying after the bit about The Two Ronnies. That’ll be the insidious Frost Effect at workzzzzzz”

After a brief involuntary nap, Nev promised to anyone still reading that he – along with his struggling counterparts at Private Eye, Have I Got News For You, Mock The Week, Bremner, Bird and Fortune, The Daily Mash, The Daily Fortnight, Newsarse, Newsbiscuit, The UK’s Voice Of Reason and Stirring Trouble Internationally - would keep striving to find some obscure characteristic to ridicule in pretend-commoner David Cameron, principle-whore Nick Clegg and the plastic Miliband clones in the lean years to come.

“But if not,” he added reassuringly, “We can always share a chuckle over David Frost’s hilarious sense of his own importance.”

Cameron Reveals Tragic Speech Impediment

Prime minister David Cameron revealed today that he suffers from a terrible speech disorder which prevents him from pronouncing the first letter of pronouns beginning with the letter Y.

Whilst dropping vague hints about how the coalition government might tackle Britain’s towering deficit mountain if it thinks it can get away with it, Mr Cameron seemed to be telling the nation that his plans for cuts in pay, pensions and benefits would be “unavoidably tough” and “affect our whole way of life.”

Fortunately, Deputy PM Nick Clegg was on hand to correct Mr Cameron, as he was taking time out from his really important mission to draw coloured lines in crayon on a dog-eared AA Map of the British Isles.

“I think what my best friend Dave is trying to say is that his cuts will affect your way of life,” he explained, to vigorous nods and thumbs-up from the prime minister.

Downing Street later issued a statement from the Prime Minister, confirming that he has had this speech defect since childhood, often leaving his parents tearing their hair out in frustration at their son’s apparent self-identification with the perfectly ghastly oiks who comprise the bulk of the population.

“It was only when I married into the upper class that they were finally reassured that I wasn’t some kind of filthy communist, selling the Socialist Worker to my chums in the Bullingdon Club,” he added. “Especially when I told them that my best friend was called Boris.”