Researchers ‘Don’t Need Research Skills,’ Say Lapdancers

Researchers no longer need research skills because vice-chancellors prefer academics who are better at ‘hustling’ their university’s name into the tabloids, rather than expanding the frontiers of human understanding, a study has suggested.

University administrators have compensated for falling profits in the academic downturn by demanding more media-friendly sensation from their performers, according to leading frottage specialists Jade and Nikki from Leeds’ prestigious Red Leopard Club. They told the British Sociological Association's annual conference that universities had relaxed standards and increased the fees students pay to dodge the Jobcentre for three years, in order to remain buoyant.

The University of Leeds' peer-review process is well underway

The expert cock-rubbers said: "It was unnecessary to have any intellectual skills whatsoever, let alone the ability to do mathematic tricks with a poll. The core skill necessary shifted from analysis to hustling for column inches."

One PhD student complained about what she said was a fall in standards. She told the lapdancers: "You'd see some girl who wasn't very bright, couldn't study, had a crap degree, making a lot more headlines than you because she was there to hang around ass-pits, not to advance the frontiers of knowledge and be intelligent."

"Overall,” concluded leading tug job authority Nikki, 36D, “There was a consensus that the cost to human knowledge of working in a university was increasing, in order to cover its overheads – such as all those shiny, soon-to-be-redundant PFI halls of residence they’ve scattered across campus on the never-never - and ensure their establishment makes a profit even when its academic reputation is non-existent."

“I can show you an unforgettable in-depth explanation in my private study area round the back of the library if you like, big boy,” she added.

Smokers And Drinkers Tell Eaters: ‘We Warned You This Would Happen’

Only these are safe to eat, until we tell you they aren't

Pinch-faced, goose-stepping health obsessives have finally got round to focusing their anger on the disgusting, weak-willed eaters of food, it emerged today – exactly as smokers and drinkers said was bound to happen, sooner or later.

“The instantly-addictive biohazard, sugar, is destined to kill every living thing on the planet unless we stigmatize the slack-jawed morons who selfishly consume it,” seethed professors Robert Himmler, Laura Goebbels and Claire Hitler of the University of California’s Department of Health Fascism. “Criminalize the scum who recklessly inflict secondary sugar on innocent bystanders as they indulge their filthy habit in public. Kill off the cynical cartoon character, Mr Cube, in favour of full-pack color photos of autopsies. Make it a capital offense to sell candy to kids. Tax it till it farts.”

Heroic members of the smoking and drinking resistance, meanwhile, solemnly went on to explain that the first concentration camps for forcibly converting everyone who still enjoys anything into biofuel are now scheduled to come online in 2020 - five years earlier than planned.

Research Proves Baby-Faced Politicians Can Crap All Over Us

Politicians can evacuate their bowels on the public as often as they like and still be loved unconditionally, according to the latest research from Jerusalem, as long as they look a bit like a big baby.

“Aww, wook at his widdle chubby cheeks,” cooed Professor Ifat Maoz of the city’s Hebrew University, as he held up a picture of a baby with a Hitler moustache added in Photoshop. “Bless.”

Reacting swiftly to capitalise on uncritical public opinion, David Cameron is to shave off all his hair and appear at the dispatch box clad only in a nappy, citing hugely-popular former Tory leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith as role models.

Meanwhile, in a snap poll conducted by the Nev Filter, the indications are that turnout could double at the next general election if voters are given a straight choice between Ian Hislop and Graham Norton.

Wah

Research Shows Gamers’ Brains Dominated By Overdeveloped ‘Masturbation Hub’

Stop it, you'll go blind

CT scans conducted on teenage computer game addicts show that their brains are radically different from those of normal people, according to new research which reveals that what scientists call the ‘wanking hub’ of the brain - which handles instant gratification – almost completely fills their skulls, leaving the parts of the brain which deal with communication, reasoning and finding a girlfriend almost completely atrophied.

“We don’t yet know whether freakish wankers are psychologically drawn into playing these pointless games over and over again while other people are going out and getting on with their lives, or if indulging in non-stop self-gratification in front of a screen actually causes brain growth to malfunction in this way,” said puzzled researchers. “Give us a load of free copies of Modern Warfare 3, and we’ll get back to you.”

Nation Of Alleged Optimists Ask Scientists: ‘Did You Mention The Economy?’

A typical British optimist thinking of the bright future

As leading neuroscientists published research claiming that the majority of the public are blissfully optimistic, the majority of the public found itself wondering if the researchers actually asked anybody what they thought about the economic future of Britain.

“I accept that I may well be underestimating the likelihood that my marriage will end in a bitter and painful divorce, and I’m almost certainly kidding myself about my 20-a-day smoking habit,” said typical self-deluder Bob Mitchell. “But when I think about the chances of my kids ever earning enough money to buy a house, it seems to me that they’re utterly fucked for the rest of their lives. Doesn’t everybody?”

Head researcher Dr Margaret Strangelove, however, insisted that Mr Mitchell was nevertheless displaying unmistakeable signs of blind optimism about the future.

“Never mind his children,” she pointed out, “He seems to have steered well clear of thinking about the rapidly-decreasing likelihood of ever paying off his own mortgage.”

Seeing A Cigarette Gives You Cancer, Scowl Experts

Sir John Mills spent his life trying to murder your kids

The merest sight of a cigarette in a movie is all it takes to give teenagers horrid cancery death, according to new research imagined by professional scolds at Bristol University.

“We asked millions of teens in the Bristol area if they had ever seen some evil, twisted bastard like Sir John Mills, Lord Attenborough or Cary Grant blatantly smoking on film, and they went into spluttering convulsions - which can only indicate the final, agonising stages of horrid cancery death,” frowned lead harridan Dr Mildred Strangelove. “Apart, that is, from one healthy young lady whose parents belong to an obscurely medieval religious sect which forbids all forms of entertainment. She asked Jesus to have mercy on our corrupt souls before her Godfearing father locked her in the cellar for a month for the sin of speaking to the damned. But she’ll live to a hundred, thanks to her family’s admirable moral strictures.”

“The government must immediately put an 18 rating on any film found to contain gratuitous smoking,” she hissed. “And the same goes for any so-called ‘entertainment’ involving fat people or visually-fatal foods, i.e. everything except salad or bran.”

Educated People Stunned To Learn That Educated People Tend Not To Live In Shitholes

Strangely enough, he doesn't have a master's

Researchers from the University and College Union are astounded by the shock discovery that hardly any of them live in Britain’s urban hellscapes, according to their own survey published today.

The nation’s intelligentsia breathed a collective sigh of relief over their morning papers as they read that they tend to live in nice, leafy areas with all the other well-qualified people, while shallow-pated ape-beasts which can only communicate their basic demands for sex, fast food and housing benefit by rudimentary grunts and thumps continue to infest the nation’s blighted inner-city warzones and Cornwall.

The report’s clever-clogs authors claim to have discovered two Britains: a green and happy place in which nice people like you, who can deploy an apostrophe with deadly accuracy and earn a salary, access the internet with laptop computers; and a concrete battlefield filled with the gibbering refuse of a rapidly-shrinking gene pool, creatures which have only recently begun to migrate from their Playstations to the internet by randomly pressing buttons on their smartphones until a social networking site obligingly appears.

“The recent invasion of Facebook and Twitter by belligerent monkey-men portends a bleak future in which the few remaining bastions of civilisation are overrun and torn to the ground by the mongrel hordes, unless we act now to ring the nation’s council estates with high walls and gun towers,” warned lead researcher Dr Mark Strangelove ominously. “Until then, guys, see you on Google+.”

Smoking Reduces Risk Of Cancer By Stunting Growth

Soon to be renamed Mr Cancer

Researchers from Cancer Research UK are in hiding today, after reporting that simply being tall greatly increases the risk of developing cancer.

“If I find those fuckers, I’m going to kill them,” growled Mark Peters, a six-footer who is currently undergoing chemotherapy. “When I was a kid, these smug bastards solemnly warned us all that ‘smoking stunts your growth’, so I spent a lonely, monastic childhood earnestly refusing all my friends’ offers of cigarettes. Imagine my shock, then, when I found out I’ve got cancer of the tall. Somebody get me a lawyer. Heads are going to roll.”

The unpleasant findings come hard on the heels of yesterday’s announcement, in a US scientific journal, that second-hand smoke almost always causes deafness in teenagers.

“Using parallel methodologies, if we couldn’t pick up a whiff of tobacco smoke we asked the children of the household if they had any hearing problems and they replied no sir, they didn’t,” explained team leader Dr Milton Strangelove.

“If, however, we spotted an ashtray in the house, we asked them to interpret and articulate empirical cognitive data concerning systemic quantum-decibel degradation of auditory parameters in the 20-20K spectrum,” he went on. “In almost every case, the response was ‘WTF?’ This conclusively proves that secondhand smoke causes deafness to such a degree that the victim invariably experiences profound difficulty in understanding speech. Another research grant, please.”

Art Can Give Same Pleasure As Love, Says Neuroscientist Balls-Deep In A Henry Moore

It crossed your mind, didn't it

Viewing art triggers the same responses in the brain as love and desire, according to a leading neurobiologist, Professor Sexi Semi of University College London, who gasped out his claim as he energetically thrust his organ rhythmically in and out of the sensual hole in one of Henry Moore’s abstract sculptures.

“It appears that when viewing da Vinci’s seminal Mona Lisa, for example, the aesthete’s brain is triggered into sending an autonomic signal to the gonads, which respond by releasing large quantities of the neurotransmitter which we scientists call Idegiver-1,” sighed the professor later over a cigarette. “Sorry, is that Tracey Emin’s spunky bed over there? Ooh… ahhh.”

Nick Clegg, meanwhile, has announced that he has grave misgivings.

String Research Escapes Funding Axe

Announcing cuts of 41% in scientific research funding – in addition to the 10% cut already announced in October’s Budget speech – science minister David Willetts confidently predicted that the UK would still maintain its position as a world leader in discovering new uses and applications for string.

Brunel would be proud

“String is now found in leading research laboratories all over the country,” he boasted. “These massive cutbacks in funding for buildings, maintenance and equipment will ensure that string will be used in ways never imagined in its inventors’ wildest dreams.”

“There’s a particle accelerator in Cheshire which is entirely held together with garden twine, and this is completely unique in the world,” he claimed. “And nuclear physicists at Imperial College’s Ascot site are making steady progress in their efforts to fish spent fuel rods out of their CONSORT reactor using parcel string and a piece of Blu-tack.”

“Meanwhile, Cambridge University is conducting important genetic research by trying to encode the human genome onto a length of baling twine,” he went on. “Over at Brunel, teams of PhD Engineering students are endeavouring to exploit the inherent structural integrity of string on behalf of the construction industry, while British Telecom’s IT labs are confidently predicting the nationwide roll-out of string-optic broadband technology by 2020.”

“We have moved far beyond mere String Theory,” added Mr Willetts proudly. “All over the world, Britain will become a byword for String Application.”

Answer To Hammerhead Shark Mystery Turns Out To Be The Bloody Obvious One

Scientists around the world fainted in amazement when colleagues finally revealed the answer to the greatest mystery in the universe.

"Ever since man first lowered his head into the oceans like a rilly long time ago, he has bent his every effort to solving one burning question, i.e. why would hammerhead sharks go round looking like that?" said Dr Michelle Strangelove of the Florida Sea World University.

"For years, religious leaders and mystics said God must have had His reasons, and great thinkers who questioned His infinite wisdom had an unfortunate tendency to, like, go on fire in those days," she told her baffled peers.

It was Galileo who first put forward the dangerous theory that having widely-spaced eyes might be some kind of aid to depth perception, which in turn might come in handy when trying to sneak up quickly on a tasty but agile morsel. As a result, he was confined to his house and cruelly denied a pet goldfish by the church authorities for the rest of his life.

With the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, Sir Isaac Newton suggested that hammerhead sharks might be particularly adept at catching fallen apples on their tray-like heads and serving them to their pointy-headed friends - until he climbed on the shoulders of giants during a trip to the seaside and realised the scarcity of apple trees in the marine environment.

In Victorian times, the well-known naturist Charles Darwin speculated that the shark's wide, flattened head might be jolly useful for banging Nail-Arsed Dolphins into rocks. However, a century of expeditions by the Royal Navy, the National Geographic Society and Jacques Cousteau failed to produce a single Nail-Arsed Dolphin to back up the theory, which discredited it somewhat in the eyes of the scientific establishment.

"Would you believe, at the exact same time, the development of the rifled-bore cannon was greatly increasing the range of naval gunnery, leading to the invention of the stereoscopic rangefinder," pointed out Dr Strangelove. "With hindsight it seems remarkable that nobody like made the connection. But hey - why should they? Do sharks have guns? I don't think so!"

"Nevertheless, by waving pencils in front of hammerhead sharks, our high-turnover team of grad students discovered that they do in fact have like rilly good eyesight, which they use to surge forward without warning and accurately snatch the pencil from the researcher's fingers, right up to the elbows," she explained. "Now all we need is to devise some kind of corrective glasses with an exceptionally wide bridge - and maybe some way of fitting them to the world's hammerhead shark population - and swimmers and their pencils will never need to fear a dip in the ocean again."

"Now, I'd rilly like to find out the real reason why limpets have shells," she added. "Can I have some more money, please?"

Scientists Paint Horrifying Picture of Senile Biomechanical Future

The youth of today could potentially live forever as soulless, demented cybernetic abominations, promised a team of horribly misguided researchers at Leeds University.

"Children born now could easily live to the age of a hundred, but with the body of a 50-year-old," enthused Professor John Frankenstein of the Institute of Evil Medical and Biological Engineering. "Assuming that the 50-year-old in question is at least 90% robot, of course."

"Advances in durable implant technology and tissue regrowth, coupled with the long-overdue abandonment of outmoded ethical concerns, could see worn-out body parts replaced by gleaming alloys, ceramics and plastics," leered the professor, as he cheerfully hacked his own arm off with a circular saw and grafted an industrial welding device into place with superglue.

Colleague Professor Eileen Davros - who has replaced her entire body from the waist down with a mobility scooter - admitted that there had been little or no progress in halting the onset of senile dementia with advancing age. However, she said that advances in motor-control interfaces meant that, with the aid of a simple control device, drooling machine-creatures could easily be directed by some kind of super-intelligent 'cyber-controller' into performing simple everyday functions - such as working in call centres, stacking shelves or forcibly upgrading the remaining fully-human population.

The twisted researchers say they are seeking £50m to further their diabolical schemes. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said the proposal was "extremely interesting", pointing out that if everyone had the body of a 50-year-old, they would never reach retirement age and therefore pensions could be abolished.

"All things considered, £50m to make this happen would seem to be money well spent," he added.

Bowel Cancer Officially Nicer Than Spina Bifida, Say Experts

The public should be force-fed every day with carcinogens because chavscum are too bloody ignorant to take folic acid supplements when trying for a baby, according to the Food Standards Agency.

"In order for folic acid to prevent spina bifida in the foetus, it should not just be taken during pregnancy but beforehand, too," said a doctor who knows better than you. "However, these manky slappers just drop their pants on a whim round the back of a nightclub after ten Bacardi Breezers and don't realise they're even pregnant until a brat drops into the toilet bowl one day - so any talk of responsible family planning is a bit fatuous, to say the least. The time has surely come to force every man, woman and child in the country to ingest synthetic folic acid on a daily basis, by pumping every single loaf of bread so full of the stuff that one slice will short out a toaster."

The FSA dismissed US and Canadian research which suggests that, since the fortification of bread flour in those countries in the 90s, cases of bowel cancer have increased.

"Call this research? It's a crock of shit," said the doctor, ripping up the reports. "It's probably just that, back in the good old days when the idiot public knew its place, those who were dying in unbearable agony as their digestive tract rotted away quite rightly felt it wasn't particularly worth troubling their terribly busy and extremely important GP about it."

"Of course, since folates are B-vitamins which occur naturally in vegetables, we wouldn't have to force-feed everyone with this stuff at all, if they'd just eat a pile of sprouts or a cabbage a day like they're supposed to," he snarled. "Bloody general public - I tell you, I've had it up to here with the fuckers. Somebody get me a scalpel! Some lucky bastard in A&E is going to get a life-changing operation, whether they need it or not."

Delay Formal Lessons Until Retirement, Says Controversial Report

Children should be allowed to continue with play-based learning until they retire, says a report submitted to ministers today.

Formal lessons in the classroom should not begin until the child is old enough to express a desire to widen the scope of their prejudices by reading the Daily Mail, according to the Cambridge Primary Review. Until that time, children should be encouraged to learn in a play-based lesson format - for example, placing things on shelves in pretty patterns, or taking turns to help their classmates to wave the gaily-coloured items past a barcode-scanning toy.

"When ze liddle childrens reach an appropriate age - thirteen or fourteen, say - zey vould be encouraged to move out of ze classroom und into a more grown-up environment - say, Tesco - vere zey vill be encouraged to further zer development by playing zese educational games viz real adults for ze next fifty-five years," said the report's author, Dr Strangelove.

"Under ze cruelties inflicted by ze present system, many five-year-olds exhibit clear signs of distress ven ze teacher tells zem it is time to put away zer Ben 10, gives zem a big colourful book und begins to explain zat ze funny liddle skviggles mean something," said the respected and feared education expert. "If you delay ze teaching of ze basic literacy by a year, zen you are only delaying ze terrible trauma. Better to forego it completely, hein? Frankly, ze educations is vasted on most of zese unterkinder. It only puts ze dangerous ideas into zere liddle heads."

The government initially rejected the proposals outright, until it was explained to them by Dr Strangelove that, naturally, the elite would still be free to send their gifted offspring to be privately educated, as befits those predestined to rule.

Government Agrees With OECD: University Really Is The Key to Beating Dole Queues

The British government has wholeheartedly endorsed an international report, published yesterday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which claims that creating more university places is the way out of recession and unemployment.

"Countries which want to position themselves for after the economic crisis should create sufficient places in university," said Andreas Schleicher, the author of the OECD report.

Prime minister Gordon Brown today launched the all-new University of Work and Pensions, with faculty offices in all major towns and cities.

Unemployed people dragging their carcasses down to the former Jobcentres to sign on expressed surprise when their newly-appointed personal tutors - instead of asking them in a bored voice what imaginary jobs they had applied for - presented them with a bill for thousands of pounds in tuition and top-up fees, and a student loan application form.

"Apparently I don't have to lift a finger for three years," explained a newly-enrolled student as he stumbled out of the former Jobcentre. "I'm no longer an unemployed scum, I'm doing a BSc in Employment Studies. If I understand this provisional timetable correctly, I have no lectures, no tutorials and no exams but an awful lot of self-mentoring practical sessions. Excuse me, I'm off to buy myself a PS3, an Xbox360, a Wii, a laptop and a guitar."

Once the three-year courses end, the money will suddenly dry up and the graduates will receive a pretty piece of paper, suitable for framing, and a demand from the student loans company telling them to start paying back the £23,000 they will have received.

"Higher education really is the way to beat unemployment," smiled the prime minister. "And I will give the unemployed a beating they'll never forget."

Couples Urged To Sleep Apart By Seriously Optimistic, Balding Academic

Couples should consider sleeping apart for the good of their health, according to an expert from the University of Surrey.

"It's not actually natural for couples to share the same bed," said Dr Neil Stanley, who set up one of Britain's leading sleep laboratories. "Take my wife, for example. She snores like a jet fighter being fired from a steam catapult with the afterburners on full blast, her malodorous farts set burglar alarms off down the street, and her unreasonable demands for fulfilling, multi-orgasmic sex - in spite of her increasing resemblance to a vast pink hippo - left me an inadequate, sobbing wreck. I was heading for a nervous breakdown, but we both agree that things have improved greatly since we started sleeping in separate rooms. Now she sleeps in the master bedroom in our Farnham house, and I sleep on a sofa bed in my state-of-the-art sleep laboratory, right here in my office in Guildford."

Dr Stanley's ground-breaking researches have led him to suggest that couples should not only sleep in separate towns if they want to get the most out of their relationships, but live completely separate lives wherever possible.

"In fact, it would be best if couples never actually met in the first place," he suggested. "I am convinced that my chances of sleeping with a nubile grad student or two will be greatly improved, now that Mrs Stanley is no longer squatting next to me with a Catherine Cookson novel, taking up space, hogging the duvet and demanding a divorce."

British Women's Appalling Ignorance of Contraception Points To Horrifying Possibility

Scientists are beginning to suspect that Britain's women may have been supplanted by some hitherto-unknown lower species with a natural talent for mimicry, after a survey revealed that their idea of contraception involves stuffing a granary loaf up their aunt Mary.

Other commonly held - but woefully inept - notions of family planning include clingfilm, crisps, Coca-Cola and kebabs.

"Jesus H Christ," sobbed a crestfallen biologist. "Five hundred generations of humanity's greatest thinkers sweated blood to broaden the horizons of knowledge and understanding, and this is the end result? It makes you think. Or rather, it doesn't."

It is now feared that some kind of mindless creature with a natural talent for mimicry - like that fly that looks a bit like a wasp, or a very big virus - may, through a chance mutation, have evolved some rudimentary feature which made it more attractive to human males.

"Imagine, if you will, a virus suddenly appears sporting a magnificent pair of baps, or a fly with a nicely rounded arse," suggested Britain's leading biologist, Richard Dawkins. "That would attract a certain number of desperate, sperm-laden males to deposit their genetic material in its rudimentary front bottom. The resulting spawn would cannibalise that human DNA, perhaps developing an irresistible orange tint. In remarkably few generations, you'd have something that would resemble a human female quite closely, especially after ten pints. But in fact it would be a hideous, mindless thing with only one overriding purpose - to replicate itself endlessly. It would have a deep-seated, instinctive aversion to any form of effective contraception - hence it adopts these absurd tactics."

"Fortunately, this awful creature - if it does exist - appears to be confined in range solely to the British Isles," explained Professor Dawkins, "And only a very shallow and limited intellect would be fooled by such a mutant monstrosity."

"Bzzz," agreed his rather attractive wife, former Dr Who assistant Lalla Ward, as she repeatedly bumped her head against a window.

The Music You Like May Say Something About Your Personal Tastes, Think Cambridge Geniuses

Liking some kinds of music more than others might possibly be something to do with who you are, according to the latest blue-skies thinking by the greatest minds in Britain.

"The dean gave us a virtuoso performance of Bach's cello pieces the other evening," explained Dr Jason Strangelove of Cambridge University's social and developmental psychology department. "And while we naturally complimented him on his mastery of some of the more technically-demanding sections, comparison with a computer rendition of the MIDI file showed that he was still not quite note-perfect. However, on the way back across the quadrangle, we heard a discordant cacophony emerging from the room of a token undergraduate from a state school. Further inquiries at the porter's lodge, after the ruffian was sent down, elicited the information that the din fell into a hitherto-unsuspected category of music called 'technology' or some such nomenclature."

"It transpires that there exists a veritable cornucopia of sub-musical genres available to the common herd," he droned on. "By luring some benighted locals into our laboratories with a trail of crisps, we were able to ascertain that, in fact, many of them exhibit certain preferences which appear to be influenced - at least in part - by their rudimentary, half-formed personalities."

The dome-headed intellectuals dissected the tastes, lifestyles, opinions and bodies of the experimental subjects, eventually reaching the following conclusions about music and personality:

AMBIENT: permanent vegetative state
CHAMBER MUSIC: used as a control reference by the right sort of people
DRUM & BASS: gets jobs involving pneumatic drills; enjoys work
EMO: believes all music was written about them personally and nobody else
FOLK: lazy guitar owner; quits halfway through beginner's lessons after deciding that two chords are probably enough to pull with
HEAVY METAL: stuck in puberty; only capable of emotional involvement with computers, distortion pedals and their own genitals
INDIE: romantic self-deluder; inclined to irrational belief that not all record labels are owned by Sony
INDUSTRIAL: pet-strangler; marked hatred of colour, light and life
JAZZ: incapable of operating electric shaver due to long-term brain damage from use of cannabinoids
J-POP: thinks reading involves looking at drawings of big-eyed teenagers and cute monsters
KRAUTROCK: repressed Poland-invading proclivities
NORTHERN SOUL: wasteland-inhabiting savage; untouched by civilisation
POP: music-hating conformist; relies on constant barrage of sound to prevent thought from occurring
RAP: convict-in-waiting (violent crime)
TECHNO: convict-in-waiting (Class A drugs offences)
WORLD MUSIC: wanker

Farting Planet Baffles French

Mars is farting methane at a truly frightening rate, according to puzzled French researchers from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

By modelling effects first seen by Americans through infrared spectroscopy, Franck Lefevre and François Forget discovered that not only does the red planet sporadically pump plumes of up to 19,000 tonnes of the noxious gas into the thin Martian atmosphere - far more than the Earth produces - but that the awful eggy stench also lingers for a shorter time than expected. The rate of methane production also appears to be seasonal, they added.

"Eet ees possible ze 'umble sprout may, en effet, 'ave originated on Mars," said Dr Lefevre, waving his arms about like an epileptic juggler and shrugging uncontrollably. "Wizout 'aving discovered ze actual vegetable patch, 'owever, eet ees 'ard to be certain when ees ze Martian growing season. But zees ees ze only explanation up with which we 'ave come. Mars ees exhibiting all ze farty signs of ze sprout-based diet. Zut alors."

"I would not go out zere eef I were you, mon brave," he warned.

After reading their Gallic colleagues' report in the journal Nature, however, NASA scientists believe they may have an explanation for the rapid disappearance of methane from the Martian atmosphere.

"Last night, in order to accurately replicate Mars under laboratory conditions, I set my team the task of consuming several crates of Coors," said mission leader Randy von Braun. "When they reached the appropriate level of methane production, I imitated the effect of Martian volcanoes by applying my Zippo to the gas plumes erupting from the appropriate fissures. And whaddya know - the methane disappeared completely, along with my eyebrows."

"But goddamn, it was one hell of an experiment," he added. "And we've invited the world's leading exologists along to what promises to be a truly awesome conference in Vegas to demonstrate our theory."

Teenagers' Brains Not Programmed to Stop Wanking and Get Out of Bed, Says Controversial Head

Teenagers should be allowed a lie-in in the morning, according to a head teacher in Tyneside.

Dr Paul Strangelove, head of Monkseaton School, says that starting school lessons at 11am can have a "profound impact" on learning.

"Teenagers are wired differently from adults," he explained. "Adults' brains eventually adapt to cope with getting up in the morning, once they finally realise you can't really get away with drinking like a bastard until sunrise, every single night of the week, and expecting to go to work in the morning feeling like Einstein. But the mind of a teenager simply isn't capable of working this out, as it is totally preoccupied with imagining what sex is like."

Memory tests performed without anaesthetic on the school's pupils by Professor Pat Pending, chair of circadian pseudoscience at Bullnose College, Oxford, showed that students' brains worked better in the afternoon.

"I say that their body clocks shift as they begin their teens because they're biologically programmed to do so, and I'm a fucking Oxford don with a gown and all that," shouted the white-coated professor from his self-designed Convert-a-Car. "Anyone who says it just takes the lazy fuckers all morning to sober up is a dirty stinking paedophile who should be strung up by the goolies."

Dr Strangelove also cited evidence showing that rousing teenagers from their beds early in the morning resulted in abrupt mood swings, increased irritability, depression, weight gain, bum fluff and a tendency to worship Bob Dylan. When it was suggested that asking teenagers to do anything at all generally produced the same results, he grabbed a nearby bottle by the neck, smashed it against a table and challenged doubting parents to come on if they were hard enough.

This is not the first time that Dr Strangelove has made the headlines. Last year he carried out a controversial experiment at the school, in which unsuspecting victims with no prior experience of the GCSE science syllabus achieved 90% pass rates after only one hour's study, punctuated by short bursts of being forced to jump through burning hoops at gunpoint.