A London alcoholic has had admitted that the person he was talking to knew far more about a topic than he did.

Dr Monkton of University College, London was seated on a park bench eating a Pret A Manger lunch, when Mr Jimmy Robertson of no fixed abode sat down next to him clutching a couple of bottles and declared: ‘So you’s think you know about people do yer?’

‘Obviously at this point I thought I knew exactly what was coming,’ recounted Dr Monkton. ‘I was already mentally preparing myself for an extended rant from this gentleman but then I thought, what the hell, let’s give it a try, and informed him that I was in fact a Psychology Lecturer at the University of London, that I’d written two PhDs and am the international expert in Freud and Jung. ‘Oh really?” replied Mr Robertson. ‘Well, then I should listen carefully to what you have to say, as you will know more about the subject than myself’.’

Jimmy went on to say that it was very difficult learning anything about human nature when you spend all day sat on a park bench with only the old and the unemployed for company and that the beer and whisky he drank in large quantities was having a generally negative effect on his critical faculties and was rendering it difficult to read about the subject in more depth.
‘I spoke to this man for over an hour,’ said Dr Monkton, ‘and gave him a brief overview of the subject and my area of academic interest. He listened carefully, took some notes and asked intelligent, focussed questions.’

Dr Monkton was so inspired by his debate with Mr Robertson that he wrote a paper about his experiences. Unfortunately, when presenting his findings to his Head of Department, he was told: ‘This is rubbish! Who do you think you are, you ponce!? Think you know so much just ‘cos you work in some ivory tower at University College? It makes me sick. Try going to the University of Life mate; that might teach you a thing or two about human nature, especially when someone lamps you one for being such a middle-class, know-it-all twat!’

Former colleague Tommy Greenwood, who worked with the Milky Bar Kid in the mid-1980s, has finally spoken out against him for the first time, claiming that the milky bars ‘were certainly never on him’. ‘The Kid used to come up with a string of excuses for why he couldn’t pay for any chocolate himself,’ claims Greenwood. ‘Often he’d say his Mum had forgotten to give him his pocket money and could he borrow 30p which he’d pay back the next day. Another favourite of his was to offer to stand in the queue at the tuck shop and order chocolate bars for all his friends but then claim to have left his money in his locker when it came to paying, forcing someone else to ‘lend him’ the required sum.’

The Milky Bar Kid, now grown up and living in Scotland, refused to comment on the allegations unless journalists paid him for a quote. Apparently he still occassionally goes in to his local and shouts ‘the Milky Bars are on me’ knowing full well that the pub does not actually sell Milky Bars.

A Milton Keynes man was left shocked and dismayed yesterday afternoon when a swimming pool full of teenagers failed to produce a single joke or derogatory remark about his excessive weight.

Mr David Blunden had been warned that he was ‘dangerously overweight’ and could be classed as ‘obese’ and so had gone to the Plaza pool fully expecting to be taunted from the very moment he put on his XXXL trunks.

But although it was the school holidays and the pool was full of teenagers, the adolescents seemed unconcerned by the enormous rolls of bare flesh hanging over Mr Blunden’s trunks as he paraded up and down the side of the pool.

‘Fair play to him’ said Candice aged 15. ‘We just presumed he must have some sort of dietary or thyroid disorder, but respected him as he was endeavouring to do something about it.’

‘Exactly…’ agreed her friend Chantelle. ‘And what business is it of ours if an outsize man wants to go swimming? These are public baths open to all, and he has as much right to use them as anyone.’

A stunned Mr Blunden was reported to be shocked and disappointed that not a single joke was made about his weight, shape, stature or any other physical characteristic; ‘I did my best. I wore tiny speedos to show off the maximum amount of flesh; I went in the fast lane to try and encourage sniggers and shouts of ‘Whale Ahoy!’ and even went up to the top diving board only to discover a group of respectful 14 year old girls, calmly allowing me to take my time while awaiting their turn. The idea that I might empty the pool by simply jumping into it wasn’t even mentioned.’

Fortunately Mr Blunden had the good luck to bump into his GP while he getting out of the pool. ‘Urgh… it’s disgusting!’ said his doctor. ‘People who are that fat shouldn’t be allowed out of their house, except to be put in prison. Except you’d never get him through the gates – the big fat lardy-pants!

The old lady, Mrs Teasdale from Lewisham in South East London, was adjudged ‘not to be a danger to herself or others’, even after she had swallowed a series of sizeable farm animals. Defending Lewisham Social Services, Councillor Bryan Clarkson said ‘When this case first came to our attention, all we knew was that there was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. It was suggested that perhaps she’ll die, though at that stage it seemed unlikely.’

However subsequent warnings that the old lady had swallowed a spider to catch the fly, and then swallowed a bird to catch the spider, should have set off alarm bells according to the department’s critics. Yet their only reaction to the news that the old lady had swallowed a cat to catch the bird was ‘Fancy that, she swallowed a cat!’ when in fact she should have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983. Further bizarre feats of compulsive swallowing were blithely accepted as normal behaviour – Mrs Teasdale swallowed a goat, which wouldn’t catch a dog in any case, and then a cow; obviously a herbivore and useless at catching a goat at the best of times. By the time she swallowed a horse it was simply too late and the coroner declared the old lady dead; ‘Of course.’

‘This litany of neglect is a damning indictment of Lewisham’s Social Services Department,’ he added. ‘At each stage, Mrs Teasdale should have been given appropriate mental and medical attention, instead she was just left to continue swallowing these animals under the tragic misapprehension that each would somehow catch the last one – when it is clear that her plan was seriously flawed on several fronts. Who knows how many other old ladies there are swallowing large domesticated animals?’

The real tragedy, according to medical experts, is that the original fly would have been killed by Mrs Teasdale’s stomach acid, thereby rendering any further swallowing completely pointless.