New Zealanders Convinced Stephen Fry Must Be Some Other Articulate Bloke Off The Telly

A typical Kiwi struggling to say 'Go home'

Whilst in New Zealand for the filming of The Hobbit, British national treasure Stephen Fry complains of constantly being mistaken for any other television personality capable of enunciating all five vowels.

“No matter how devilishly I secrete myself within the scenic magnificence of this linguistically-challenged backwater, up pops some ruddy-faced sheepshearer, invariably jabbing a grubby finger in my face and making, ‘Ir, ir yi Jims Miy? Ir yi Jirmi Clrxn?’ noises,” groaned the lugubrious polymath. “To which I am naturally compelled to reply – and in doing so, if I may venture so presumptuously, with almost Wildean jocosity - ‘Oh, I am sorry. Would you by any chance happen to be terribly afflicted with lockjaw, my fine jolly swain, or is your unfortunate impediment caused by some sort of diet-related wiring?’”

“That’s usually when they hit me,” he added ruefully from his hospital bed.

Mr Fry’s ongoing attempts to write a script for Peter Jackson’s long-delayed ‘Dambusters’ remake, meanwhile, have met with frustration as he struggles in vain to find a New Zealand actor who can pronounce Eder, Möhne or Sorpe without dislocating their face.

Editors’ Tears Of Joy As British Casualties Emerge From Wreckage Of NZ Quake Story

The Newsnight production team in full-on tragedy mode

Just when all hope seemed lost, the New Zealand earthquake story coughed back to life today with the news that two Britons were among the dead.

Tears flowed as joyful journalists and news editors hugged each other and danced around their desks - whilst in Christchurch itself, reporters were all smiles as they booked themselves back into the hotels they had just left to catch the next flight home.

“Realistically, there was little hope of this story clinging to life after this length of time,” said one, as he asked the hotel barman for a receipt. “There’s only so much mileage you can get out of saying how New Zealand is so like England, because at the end of the day it plainly isn’t. The streets are clean, the buildings aren’t ugly, people have decent jobs and a high standard of living and everyone’s happy. To the British people, it’s just another foreign country full of foreign people who happen to speak English.”

“Now, however, everything has changed,” he said, knocking back a double Scotch and asking for a refill. “With two Britons confirmed dead and more missing, this has now become a national tragedy for the folks back home. Hic.”

A BBC spokesman at Television Centre confirmed the happy news that the story was indeed alive and well.

“In fact, it’s on its legs and running about already,” he beamed. “For a while there it was touch and go, and I thought we were going to have to embark on a period of mourning and wailing, full of sob stories about the tragic state of the economy, job losses and service cuts. But this makes us stop and realise just how precious a gift death is.”

A Downing Street spokesman said that the government, too, was overjoyed at the miraculous revival of the story, and urged the British public to keep its eyes firmly fixed on the other side of the world.

Striking Hobbitses Down Tools In Shire

Negotiations left hobbit reps feeling rather disappointed

Last-minute talks between hobbit leaders and the race of men have broken down, according to reports coming out of the Shire. The rural backwater is expected to descend rapidly into chaos, as militant hobbits withdraw their labour and spend all day in the pub.

Discussions broke down when the wise Lord Peter of Bree – who has been trying without success to hire non-unionised hobbitses – threatened to transport the Shire in its entirety to Middle Europe. Hobbit representatives promptly stumped out of the meeting, although they had to ask one of Lord Peter’s men to open the door for them as none of them could reach the handle.

“Lord Peter do refuse to give us minimum guarantees of wages or working conditions,” the hobbitses’ main negotiator, Bilbo Baggins, told waiting scribes. “Us hobbits’ve got no objection in principle to working with dwarves, as long as they shares their gold with us, but clearly dragons do raise all sorts of health and safety issues which we feel haven’t been properly addressed.”

Lord Peter, meanwhile, warned that if he magically uprooted the Shire to Central Europe, a terrible drought would fall upon Middle Earth.

“First there will come a terrible drought of American money-giants, as I am the sole dreamweaver in the entire realm,” he predicted. “Then another drought, more direful even than the first, will blight the land as thousands of happy wandering gnomes from far across the oceans decide not to bother with the long and arduous journey to these picturesque shores any more. Eventually, only the nibblesome sheep will remain. Hearken; for I, Lord Peter, have foretold this.”

Meanwhile, in the Shire, hobbitses put their big hairy feet up and settled down, dismissing rumours that Lord Peter might, in his anger, send sorcerous flying machines to destroy their irrigation dams.

“He’m been a-gassin’ about that afore,” said old Gaffer Gamgee dismissively, on the picket line barring access to the toll road into the Shire. “Well, oi tells ‘ee, oi’ll believe they when oi sees they.”

Cop a Load of My Baps, You Sexist Bastards

An Israeli tourist has fought back against sexist workmen who wolf-whistle at attractive women, by stripping off in the street.

The unnamed woman was about to use a cash dispenser in Kerikeri, in the far north of New Zealand, when the road gang whistled at her. She stripped, took out her cash from the machine, put her clothes back on and walked off.

“She’s not an unattractive lady,” said Police Sergeant Peter Masters. “She was taken back to the police station and spoken to, and told that was inappropriate in New Zealand. Our women are trolls, so we just aren’t used to seeing real live babes. These workmen were innocently going about their business, and when this heavenly creature appeared before them like a vision they were, understandably, rendered temporarily speechless. When she flashed her assets at these poor, deprived men, two of them fainted dead away and one had a heart attack. Now they can’t bear to go home to their hideous old munters. We’ve sent her back to Israel before we suffer a national hag crisis.”

New Zealand’s wretched crones protested vigorously at being labelled as ugly. However, when it was pointed out to them that, in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, the female stars were two Australians and an American while the pride of New Zealand’s womanhood appeared as the horse-riding men of Rohan, they quietly crawled back under their bridges to pounce on unwary travellers – a traditional form of courtship in New Zealand.