That Idyllic Rural Olympic Opening Ceremony In Full

1. Lord Coe is discovered lying face-down among the hydrangeas, with a knife in his back.

2. Police seal off picturesque Olympic Stadium from 21st century.

Celebrating the timeless tranquility of the British countryside

3. Inspector of ceremonies descends in huge Volvo-sponsored balloon.

4. Identity parade featuring 1st Queen’s English regiment of middle-class suspects.

5. Buckinghamshire red herrings distributed among cheering spectators.

6. Display of formation dancing by police around illuminated replica of mulberry bush.

7. Spectators led merrily up enormous garden path.

8. Traditional pruning of tangled relationships.

9. Ceremonial unveiling of the guilty party.

10. Pub.

Olympian Gift Of Fire Coming To Plymouth

Benighted Plymothians say they are looking forward to learning the secret of fire, which is being brought to them today from the lofty heights of Mount Olympus.

According to the village idiot (available in local newsagents) “billions of eyes” will be watching the remote stone-age settlement as it celebrates the arrival of fire tonight – although Argus swiftly pointed out that he only had a hundred eyes, and anyway all of them would be watching Bayern Munich v Chelsea on ITV.

How the iconic Smeaton's Tower will look

“We’m got a proppa Labrinth set opp on the ’Oe innum, moy burd,” said recently-retired tribal elder Viv Pengelly, speaking to the drooling idiot as grateful savages enthusiastically piled up brushwood ready for her starring role at the pinnacle of the evening’s festivities.

“Focken oi an’ oi’s looken fawwerrd to focken ’eeren Jamaican tawked proppa boi a reow focken darky frumm opp Babylon way innit blud,” grunted a feral devotee of the feared ‘Way of the South’. “Oi an’ oi carnt focken wait royt to troy owwt this ’ere aarson wot oi ben focken ’eeren bowt.”

“Focken,” he added, after giving the matter some thought.

Tomorrow, the foolhardy runner who dares to bring the sacred flame to Plymouth will be chained to a rock by the angry gods and have his guts pecked out by seagulls. The guts will then be stuffed into a pasty by Mr Ivor Dewdney.

Extra Personnel To Reduce Queues At Heathrow

MoD Fails To Take Into Account Servicability Of Lifts In Council Tower Blocks

Put it in the park instead

Angry residents in Tower Hamlets have warned the Ministry of Defence that any surface-to-air missiles they try to install on the roofs of council apartment blocks for the duration of the Olympics will have to be carried up the stairs as the lifts aren’t working, and will almost certainly be nicked by those toerags on the fifth floor and sold for drugs.

“I don’t have any idea what the current street value of a Starstreak missile is,” said local resident Bob Wilcox, 81, “But I bet the local gangs would be delighted to point a couple at anyone else who tries dealing on their turf.”

An MoD spokesman assured residents that any High Velocity Missiles stationed on Tower Hamlets rooftops would be lowered into place by nice, quiet Chinook helicopters.

“Besides, the piss-laden stench of the stairwells would corrode the electronics something chronic,” he added. “Nobody wants our tracking systems to identify a sprinter as a rapid incoming threat, lock on and blow them sky high. Why, if they weren’t members of Team GB, we could be accused of cheating.”

God Banned From Olympics

This is the true spirit of the Olympiad

Tiresome spoilsport God is to be barred from Britain for the duration of the London Olympics under emergency legislation which, sources say, will be pushed through in George Osborne’s budget on Wednesday.

The chancellor is reported to be furious at God’s mulish refusal to permit dedicated sport fans to buy a sofa at 5:30 on a Sunday morning.

“If God won’t let the servant class work all the hours He sends, He can bugger off to North Korea for a couple of weeks and jolly well like it,” snapped a Treasury official. “His pig-headed attitude proves - if proof were needed - that sport and religion don’t mix.”

God may be allowed back into Britain once the sporting event has ended, he added, but only if He gives His solemn undertaking to the Tesco board of directors never again to interfere in their good works.

Public Warned Not To Approach Dangerous Union Fugitive

The evil al-Cluskey, spreading his sick message of hate

Police today urged the public to report any sightings of Unite gang boss Len McCluskey, who is on the run after threatening to rain dire doom and destruction down upon the Olympic Games, but warned them not to approach the desperate fugitive for their own safety.

Prime minister David Cameron declared McCluskey the most dangerous criminal on the loose in Britain today, and urged people to stay in their jobs until the anti-terrorist forces have done what needs to be done.

Meanwhile McCluskey’s maiden aunt, Ed Miliband, made a tearful TV appeal to the fugitive to give himself up to the authorities amid growing fears that he may be trying to return to familiar home territory, the 1970s.

“We love you, Len, as a valuable member of our little family,” sobbed the old lady whose struggle to keep him on the straight and narrow have come to nothing. “But think of the harm you’re doing to your loved ones with all this fighting talk, just when we thought people were beginning to forgive us after all these years of being shunned and spat at in the streets. Please, please - just give up and let us move on.”

Key Points Of David Cameron’s New Year Message

He's back. Did you miss him?

1. There are no invisible countries.
2. Fortunately, we’ve lined up some nice distractions for you.
3. Because this year the shit’s really going to hit the fan.
4. If I fiddle with all the broken stuff a bit - the NHS, education, law enforcement, that sort of thing – you never know, I might eventually be able to bodge something together that works. Well, sort of.
5. I’ve found some jolly splendid words in the dictionary to describe how things used to be, back in the good old days.
6. Did I mention the nice shiny things?
7. Never mind. A hundred years from now, none of this will matter.

Missile Launching Added To 2012 Olympics

In deference to widespread American fears that the United Kingdom is populated entirely by the Taleban, London 2012 organisers have agreed that the two discretionary sports they can add to the Olympic roster will consist of surface-to-air and air-to-surface missile launching.

Run, Usain Bolt, run

“Each US entrant will have to compete encumbered with an FGM-148 Javelin man-portable wire-guided missile launcher,” Lord Coe told reporters. “While the weight of the missile, launch tube and guidance controls may prove something of a handicap, we are looking at ways to reward successful kills with time, distance or points bonuses.”

“Meanwhile, the US Air Force will be deploying its battle-tested A-10 tankbusters in the skies above London, ready to take on any challenges from other nations,” he added. “We shall, of course, be providing America’s gung-ho flyboys with the latest intel on the configuration and schedules of London’s buses and overground Tube services - so with a bit of luck there shouldn’t be that many regrettable blue-on-blue incidents.”

As an extra sop to frightened US competitors, each will be accompanied at all times by dedicated FBI agents, specially trained to hurl themselves bodily into the path of any incoming suicide bombers, gun-wielding fanatics or competitors.

Conspiracy Theorists Horrified As Seb Coe Accidentally Repeats The Philadelphia Experiment

Outraged conspiracy theorists solemnly warned Lord Coe today that his ill-advised attempt to make HMS Belfast - the historic WWII cruiser moored on the Thames – vanish into thin air may well have torn a rift in the fabric of space which will ultimately suck London, and ultimately all the matter in the universe, into a terrible inter-dimensional void where time and the laws of physics have no meaning.

HMS Belfast (probably)

“In 1943 the US Navy secretly embarked upon Project Rainbow, hoping to make their ships invisible to radar by applying Einstein’s mysteriously incomplete unified field theory,” explained an earnest man in a tinfoil hat. “The unintended result was that the USS Eldridge disappeared completely for several minutes, leaving a hull-shaped impression in the waters of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, before reappearing with half of its crew horribly merged into the very fabric of the ship and the rest stark raving bonkers. The entire population of Philadelphia saw this happen, but obviously they were all sworn to secrecy by Naval Intelligence. It’s not just on the internet, there’s a book about it so it must be true. Lord Coe must be insane to even contemplate repeating this foolhardy attempt to tamper with the space/time continuum.”

He added that it was surely no coincidence that the disappearance of HMS Belfast coincided exactly with asteroid 2005 YU55’s sudden lunge towards the earth.

So far today, however, visitors to HMS Belfast have reported no signs of any sailors sticking out of the deck or running around screaming - although several claim to have been approached by furtive tinfoil-clad men with cricket bats skulking behind hatches, asking whether they happened to have noticed a secret compartment full of valves.

A spokesman for London 2012 commented: “Er…whoops… there’s this thing called Photoshop …”

Olympic Flame Unlikely To Make It Out Of Plymouth

Plymouth's inmates are already making plans

Britain’s security chiefs are desperately trying to persuade Olympic planners to amend the route of the Olympic Torch in 2012, citing the virtual impossibility of guaranteeing its safe passage through the lawless dirt-tracks of Plymouth.

“If the council get their hands on it they’ll use it to send the old Palace Theatre up in flames, which will conveniently release them from their statutory duty to repair the place and send a huge bill they know will never be paid to the prison cell of its drug-dealing owner,” warned a senior MI5 officer. “But that probably won’t happen, as it’s quite likely to be seized first by public-spirited citizens to roast them alive inside their tumbledown Civic Centre and Council Chamber.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Devon & Cornwall Police in Exeter pointed out that the local tribes - fascinated by the bright shiny thing – will almost certainly beat the crap out of its hapless bearer, make an unsuccessful attempt to flog it to Wants and finally break it over the heads of their feral hellspawn.

“That’s if the howling wind and rain don’t extinguish it on the way over the Tamar Bridge, of course, before it even gets into Plymouth,” he added. “Look, there’s this little bridge over the Tamar at Sydenham Damerel which nobody in Plymouth knows a thing about. From there, you can sneak it across Dartmoor via Okehampton… er... on second thoughts, perhaps it might be best if you just flew it straight to Exeter.”

Propaganda Department Only For Olympics, Promise MPs

There's a good chap

The Foreign Affairs Committee has published a report urging the government to set up a special unit to rebuff and correct negative stories about Britain which could damage the country’s reputation during the build-up to the 2012 Olympic Games.

The unit – which would not be known as the Ministry of Propaganda, said the MPs, because of certain negative connotations – would be tasked with promoting Britain as diverse, inclusive, friendly, orderly, helpful, peace-loving, nutritious, big-hearted, crime-free, sustainable, well fit, paved with gold, elysian, huggable, lemon fresh, utopian, scrumptious, tropical, 100% organic, bouncing with health, always ready with a cup of tea and a cheery song; or, as the committee put it, “in a word - perfect.”

“During the Olympics there will be some 25,000 reporter johnnies in Britain, and most of them damnably foreign to boot,” said chairman Richard Ottaway, “What you have to bear in mind is that these games are going to be watched by four billion wogs, all of whom are going to see that the bloody place is falling to bits if we’re not careful.”

The committee proposes that any foreign news reports of rubbish-strewn shopping centres, run-down inner cities, panhandling drug addicts, Muslims, gang-related shootings, neo-nazi marches, howling drunk Scotsmen, Daily Mail headlines or riot police hammering the crap out of disabled protesters would be countered immediately with smiling ministerial pronouncements that the silly journalists had inadvertently wandered into a family-friendly theme park showcasing the bad old days under Labour. The straying reporters would then be assigned a helpful police minder to save them from accidentally departing from the script again.

Prime minister David Cameron said he would take the committee’s recommendations on board, stressing that the propaganda unit would, naturally, only be in existence for the duration of the Olympics.

“After that, you have my solemn word that you will hear no more of it,” he promised, with a wide grin.

Phelps Signs Sponsorship Deal With Entire Food Industry

Michael Phelps, the top-scoring athlete from the Beijing Olympic Games, has signed the largest sponsorship deal in history, ecstatic marketing executives revealed today.

The swimming star, who carried away eight gold medals, can thank his four-million-calorie diet for the unprecedented corporate attention.

“Michael’s big pointy chin will fill the advertising breaks of television stations across the entire world,” grinned a coke-sniffer in a suit. “A typical advertising break might consist of Michael extolling the virtues of Warburton’s Super-Thick, Three-Slice-per-Loaf Toastie Bread, then slurping down a Bucket Noodle, munching his way through an entire 12-pack of Walkers lard-flavoured crisps and biting a sizeable chunk out of a freshly-slaughtered slab of prime beef before downing a jerrycan of Red Bull’s godawful new pretend-Cola in one.”

“Eat, sleep and swim, that’s all I can do,” beamed the 23-year-old sporting phenomenon, before deafening everyone in earshot with a 150-decibel burp which lasted for a full minute.

Brown Inspires Afghan Hell-Hole Troops To Emulate To Olympic Heroes

In an impromptu drop-in visit to Afghanistan on his way to what promises to be a truly awesome party in Beijing, Gordon Brown has won the hearts and minds of his hard-pressed forces, praising them for being as brave as Britain’s Olympic medal-winners.

Members of 16 Air Assault Brigade based at Camp Bastion fought to hold back unsoldierly tears of adulation for their leader as the Prime Minister told them: “This week we are celebrating the Olympics where we have had great successes. But this week I also believe our Olympic athletes and everybody else in our country will remember that you have shown exactly the same courage, professionalism and dedication. Hullo, is that a news camera? Well, fancy that. I have no idea how the media managed to find out about this top-secret visit. Gosh, is that the time? Must dash, or I’ll miss the first course.”

As Mr Brown was whisked away, escorted by squadrons of strike fighters and assault helicopters, hard-bitten troopers applauded his death-defying five-minute photo-opportunity.

“Next time I’m out patrolling the lawless, mine-strewn badlands of Helmand province in my paper-thin Land Rover, with my cardboard body armour and a half-decent pair of boots I had to pay for myself, Gordon Brown’s stirring words will inspire me to be as courageous and professional as our do-or-die yachties pottering heroically about in the pollution-infested Chinese waters, risking life and limb in their colourful little dinghies,” said a grizzled sergeant who had served in both Gulf Wars, Northern Ireland and the Balkans.

Another veteran with two tours in the Middle East under his belt expressed the hope that, should his feet be blown off by an improvised pipe bomb, he might find within himself the same stoic endurance in the face of unimaginable suffering as Paula Radcliffe showed when she limped into 23rd place clutching her gammy hip.

Meanwhile, the PM told the press that he would be having stern words about human rights with China’s leaders, between mouthfuls, at the gala dinner he would shortly be attending.

Brown Seeks Olympic Gold

Gordon Brown has sent his congratulations to Britain’s athletes for their medal success in the Beijing Olympics.

In a letter to team GB, the Prime Minister called their 17-medal weekend haul “a superb and unprecedented achievement”.

“You may be too young to remember that, in a fit of uncharacteristic generosity, I flogged off half of Britain’s gold reserves at knock-down prices between 1999 and 2001,” he went on. “Since then, we’ve had to pay for a couple of wars, prop up Northern Rock and throw huge wads of cash at various consultants, train companies and IT contractors – and, what with the price of everything nowadays, the spare cash tin’s looking pretty empty. Sorry to bother you - and I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate – but when you return home in triumph clutching your gold medals, could you just spare a few for the Treasury? They’d make all the difference – I’m about to be made homeless, mate. You haven’t got any more, have you? I couldn’t be really cheeky, could I, and have the bronze and silver ones too? Bless you.”

Several Olympic medallists coughed and looked the other way, while others muttered that Mr Brown would probably just pop straight round to Tbilisi and waste the money on vodka.

Cheap Spectacles For London

The organising committee responsible for Britain’s 2012 Olympic Games is playing down expectations of the opening ceremony in London, after witnessing China’s extravagant, £20bn spectacle on Friday.

“I think the Beijing Games could end up being unique,” said Paul Deighton, the committee’s chief executive. “Their ceremonial burning of a 200-foot high pile of money may never be bettered, unfortunately – certainly it looks like, by 2012, the whole of Britain won’t be worth £20bn. We’ll have to be extravagantly wasteful in a cheaper way. We’re setting up a feasibility study to look into an endangered species theme – mountain gorillas, maybe, or pandas. I quite like the panda option myself - it links nicely back to China, doesn’t it? We could round up every surviving member of the species and make them all dance round the stadium for the entertainment of the crowd - and the estimated four billion viewers watching on television - before beheading them all on a giant guillotine and selling their severed heads as souvenirs of the first public extinction in history. Now that would be something to tell your grandchildren about in years to come, wouldn’t it?”

Don't Take Away My Breakaway

More Olympic news, and Russia has snatched an early lead in the Freestyle Slaughtering event, storming into the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Georgian team were completely taken aback by the ferocity of the Russian opening move, in which relay teams of strike aircraft carpet-bombed the region’s capital, Tskhinvali, closely followed by an assault wave of 10,000 pawns. The Russians then brought the Black Sea Fleet into play, blockading the region’s ports in a classic encircling manoeuvre.

The Georgian coach said he had conceded, withdrawing all of his pieces from the area. However, the Russians are playing on, determined to gain a maximum score before retiring, and have begun bombing parts of Georgia close to the capital, Tbilisi, and moving their knights deep into Georgian territory before withdrawing them in a classic dummy feint tactic.

“There’s no room for complacency in this game,” said the UN umpires. “With Chinese and Indian breakaway factions trying to slaughter everyone in sight, the Russian team will want to make sure they’re sitting on an unassailable death toll.”

The Palestinian entry showed initial promise; but after five minutes its team members began attacking each other, leaving opponents Israel as little more than bystanders. Rank outsiders Mauretania, however, have been disqualified, as it became clear that their initially-promising coup turned out to have been achieved with a disappointing lack of bloodshed.

However, all eyes are on the American team, whose form in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last few years has been impressively consistent and surely makes them the team to beat – although their endgame strategy has been a weak point in recent years, leading to several stalemates.

08.08.08 State

The few remaining members of the human race with a natural resistance to sport were said to still be laughing now, after hearing this morning’s widely-reported announcement that an estimated four billion people would be watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games today.

“With an estimated global population of just under 6.7bn, that would mean that six out of every ten people on Earth are currently glued to their TV screens watching a load of athletes poncing about in a queue,” said the solitary BBC reporter who was left behind to man the Television Centre newsroom for a fortnight. “Of course they are. Nobody’s working, or sleeping, or struggling to eke out a marginal existence in some godforsaken corner of the earth, are they? Welcome to the world of media hype, ladies and gentlemen - I’m afraid it’s going to be like this for the next couple of weeks.”

Combatants on all sides, in conflicts all over the world, lay down their weapons and gathered together around the nearest TV screen or mobile phone to stare slack-jawed at the tacky spectacle of gaudy medal-chasers prancing around the Beijing stadium.

Meanwhile, forty million drooling, Olympic-addicted viewers in the UK said they were rabidly looking forward to a relentless 24-hour diet of sheepdog trials, fly fishing, deep-sea diving, street brawling, cheese rolling, worm charming, tiddlywinks, World of Warcraft and countless other non-events where British competitors might be in with a passing chance of earning a gong of some kind, or at least not trip over their shoelaces.

The few people who find themselves totally unmoved by the $40bn extravaganza are said to be planning a small get-together, deep in a cave on some remote island.

Later, on their way back to their respective countries after the opening ceremony, the world’s politicians will no doubt be looking forward to two weeks in which they could cheerfully throw disabled people into wood-chippers, and nobody would know or care.

Beijing Olympics Promise Breathtaking Performances

Olympic athletes are still facing serious health risks in Beijing, despite Chinese authorities spending $16bn on reducing pollution for the forthcoming games, according to Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at Kings College London.

The UN has already reported that pollution levels are more than three times higher than the World Health Organisation’s safe limits, and are unlikely to fall much before the games begin.

“Athletes breathe in ten times as much air into their lungs as spectators,” explained Professor Kelly. “They are pushing their bodies to their limits, so pollution will have serious consequences.”

The Chinese authorities took time out from their busy schedule of rounding up dissidents and putting restrictions on journalists to say they were stepping up last-minute measures to improve air quality in their smog-blanketed capital.

“The people of Beijing are eager to make the games a success,” said President Hu Jintao, “And they have all volunteered to breathe in deeply just before the opening ceremony, and hold their breath until after the games have finished and everyone has gone home.”

Sceptical International Olympic Committee chiefs have been busy making contingency plans. New events have been added to the roster - including the 200m marathon, spitball, the 25m sprint to the lavatory, hurling, the deca-Savlon and throwing the breakfast. Swimmers may be allowed to wear aqualungs, as indeed may all the other competitors.

Some athletes have spoken out, saying that the debilitating effects of pollution mean they will not be fit enough to break any records. They were immediately arrested by the Chinese authorities, put on trial for five minutes and hauled off to labour camps.

In a separate development, Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova has pulled out of the competition, citing a nerve problem.

“I haven’t got the nerve to go to Beijing and risk breathing the lethal cocktail of toxins that passes for air there,” she told reporters.

Coldplay Topple Tibet and the Olympics from Top of News Charts

The weekend saw the Olympic torch pass through the streets of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, amid heavy Chinese security and suggestions that the people lining the route were hand-picked by the authorities. The re-released story briefly topped the news charts, before being toppled by the exciting news that Coldplay have their first number one hit with their current single, ‘Viva La Vida’.

TV viewers around the world were puzzled to see Tibet and the Olympic torch back on their screens after a gap of several weeks. BBC switchboards were jammed with calls, with “Is this a repeat?” the most common complaint.

“I thought we’d sorted Tibet out weeks ago,” said one viewer. “Now I’m worrying about the fuel prices. When that blows over, I might bother myself slightly about the A-level results, or get vaguely worked up over the length of the parliamentary recess. But Tibet is old news. Boring.”

Summit Wrong

Chinese officials are rejoicing over the arrival at the summit of Mount Everest of a special high-altitude Olympic torch.

The torch was carried to the roof of the world by a team of 12 climbers, with the final ascent shown live on Chinese TV.

“We’re very pleased about this feat,” said a Chinese spokesman. “This is about the only place on earth where you can see the Olympic flame without some damn fool protesters trying to grab it. In fact we’re thinking of relocating the entire Olympics to the summit of Everest.”