The coveted ‘World’s Number 1 Mum’ award is in crisis this weekend as a huge surge in cheap imitation awards has been discovered in gift shops around the globe. The highly respected annual award is an international honour on a par with the Nobel Peace Prize or the Pulitzer, is bestowed upon the mother who is judged by the esteemed committee to be the best mother in the whole wide world. The mother is selected from a shortlist of two billion.

Each year the trophy itself differs, having previously been presented in the form of a mug, a key ring, a card, a photo frame, a baggy T-shirt or a cushion. However the recent spate of ‘knock-off’ awards, unofficial copies mass-produced by rogue manufacturers has damaged the award’s reputation. ‘Many no longer realise that we are a highly respected international jury’ said the awards committee chairman Lord Bragg. ‘So many people have been presenting their mother with one of these cheap, low quality forgeries that the real award has lost its kudos.’

Indeed last year, when the award was given to a Jackie Hunt, she had already received two ‘fakes’ from her children and was unaware of the status of the official prize. Although she was pleased to accept the certificate and ‘World’s No. 1 Mum’ teddy, Lord Bragg believes that she wasn’t that bothered. ‘Most mothers seem more pleased that their children appreciate them. I’ve heard one winner say that the official award wasn’t as special as the one that her son got at the petrol station.’

Lord Bragg refused to divulge the winner of this year’s award, although it is believed a Mrs Hilary Hennell is very high on the list. ‘That’s saved me the cost of a card’ said her son.

Secret documents leaked by a Conservative Party insider have revealed that Leader of the Opposition David Cameron and Liberal leadership hopeful Nick Clegg are actually one and the same person.

‘You never saw them in a room together did you…’ conceded BBC political editor Nick Robinson who admitted to having missed the identity scam that had the entire Westminster village completely fooled. Cameron’s original motivation had apparently been to infiltrate the rival Liberal Democrats and undermine Menzies Campbell from within. However he was so successful that Campbell was forced to resign and his alter-ego of Clegg became the front runner to lead Britain’s third party.

‘It is incredible that David Cameron got away with this for so long; but all credit for inventing someone so completely different to himself,’ commented Robinson. ‘David is a clean-shaven upper middle-class white man in a suit, whereas Nick Clegg is, well on that front they were the same. But Cameron went to Eton, whereas Clegg was educated at Westminster. Cameron went to Oxford while Clegg went to Cambridge, Cameron is forty, while Clegg is thirty-nine. The differences just go on and on…’

The irony is that while both prominent politicians were haranguing the government about identity theft, one of them was an invented character based on forged personal details. Labour have said that the identity theft makes Cameron unfit for high office, and are now looking at Clegg’s tax policies to see if there are any that they can add to the ones they stole from Cameron.

Meanwhile rival Liberal leadership contender Chris Huhne says the whole episode has confirmed why Nick Clegg can’t be new Liberal Democrat leader, although it may not have been Chris Huhne, it may have been George Osborne just pretending to be a prominent Liberal.

Britain officially ran out of un-famous people at 11.49pm last night, after the last remaining member of the public appeared in ITV3 reality TV show called ‘Celebrity Search UK’.

Producers of British reality TV shows such as Big Brother or X-Factor had long been warning about the diminishing number of un-famous people but the sudden stardom of Britain’s last member of the public had still occurred earlier than many sociologists had predicted.

‘Every year it has been getting more difficult to find people who haven’t been on other TV shows’ said Joe Tandy a runner for BBC2’s The Apprentice. ‘We have to turn people down all the time for having been on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’, ‘Help! My Kids Are Fat’, ‘My Really Ugly Neighbours’ or ‘Homes That Smell’. All our cameramen are famous, the caterers, everyone – filming has to keep stopping while everyone gets everyone else’s autographs.’

Gregory Charles, a mathematician at Cambridge University believes what is called ‘total celebrity saturation’ will now spread across the rest of the globe; ‘If you include internet novelty acts and radio phone-ins, there are actually only eighty-three people left in all of Europe who haven’t had their fifteen minutes of fame. Even with just the daytime shows, they’ll have to start repeating people in less than three months’ he claimed.

Joe Tandy added; ‘The market is just too over saturated. X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent can sweep through over 10,000 people in one series; it’s just too much to keep everyone in business.’ One hope was that illegal migrants arriving at the French channel ports could be used. But then the producer recognised most of them from the new ITV phone-vote reality asylum competition ‘Who wants to win British passport?’

However the BBC believe they have devised the next generation of talent shows with a radical new competition in which thousands of celebrities compete to win lifelong obscurity and anonymity. The winner gets their own series on BBC 4.