The Ministerial statement, written on a piece of card torn from the top of a cornflakes packet adds; ‘These plns have been in plaice for literrally days and will ensure that youngg people will have a completely different sort of schoool to play truant fromm.’

He went on to assure education professionals that inspirational teachers had been recruited from all sorts of training courses ‘with the possible exception of teacher training courses.’

Campaigners were originally angry that some packaged breads contain up to 2g of salt per 100g, but the discovery that most brands of common table salt may contain as much as 100g of salt per 100g has caused outrage.

‘When I spoon mountains of salt on my food,’ complained health activist Terry Nacl, ‘how can I possibly tell that hidden within the briny goodness is a dangerously high level of salt? The public need far more openness, and if possible, lashings of malt vinegar.’

Brian Seaman, spokesman for the salt industry, was dismissive, saying: ‘This is just the sort of story we expect to see in the silly season.’

Merseyside band Half Man Half Biscuit released their successful ‘Back In The DHSS’ album in 1985 to popular acclaim, many of the songs being light-hearted mockery of minor British celebrities, Hughes included. Within a few years, however, many of these people were dead in mysterious circumstances – Fred Titmus eaten by lions, Bob Todd drowned in a font and Jim Reeves choking on his own feet. The clear connection between these bizarre events being the doomed LP, which was soon withdrawn from sale.

For several years, the curse seemed to have died down, until Ganley’s recent terrible end, impaled on his own triangle. Hughes now believes she is fated to be next, and is reported to be so terrified she is even refusing voice-over work.

One expert in the paranormal, the Church of England’s chief exorcist the Reverend Arthur Renfield, believes Hughes’ life may not actually be in danger. ‘Yes, there’s a curse,’ he explained today. ‘But I’ve seen the 1996 Liver Birds revival – believe me, she’s suffered enough.’

It has long been considered embarrassing that the mascot of RAF 617 squadron was named using racist vernacular. The fact that the original 1955 film retained this name for the dog character has led to it scarcely, if ever, being screened in America, and plans for a long-overdue remake foundered for years on the thorny question of how to include the animal without offending viewers.

‘People are very concerned about maintaining historical integrity,’ explained Fry this morning, ‘But say what you like, you just can’t have a modern movie shown in the US with a dog called the N-word. I decided that ‘Cuntface’ had the right melange of wit and edginess, and so ‘Cuntface’ he became.’

However, Fry is already under pressure from the film’s American financiers to change one or two aspects of the story for the US audience. In a new draft by two Los Angeles based screenwriters, the movie opens with a maverick American low-ranking serviceman  inventing a new type of bomb after skimming stones with his disabled son. He struggles to get the idea past his obstinate superior and eventually has to go straight to the top where President Roosevelt interrupts a meeting with Winston Churchill and the Queen to talk to him. Fortunately the American president sees the merit of his plan and once the Queen has stopped stuttering, he gives the green light to proceed.

Tom Hanks then leads a crack unit of Flying Fortresses on the bombing mission from New Orleans with a refuelling stop at a tiny Atlantic Island. Here they dance to Glen Miller and the Beatles and are pursued by grateful local girls who go mad for gifts of gum and stockings before they launch Cruise Missiles at Baghdad and land to liberate Auschwitz from the Russians.

‘It’s a surprisingly loose interpretation of history…’ admitted Fry, ‘but I’m sure we can keep the original spirit of the film intact. The scene with Tom Hanks surfing his way across the flooded Ruhr shooting Nazi leaders is close enough…’

rickwestwell and Ironduke

‘The Brazilian rainforest was for thousands of years a wonder of the natural world, but if you look at the Amazonian coverage these days, it’s pretty thin on the ground,’ said environmental expert Brian Mottram. ‘In retrospect, there’s perhaps a certain inevitability to it. We’ve been exfoliaging enthusiastically since the 80s and it’s no surprise that it’s almost all been stripped back. Seeing what’s left is like looking at a young virgin rainforest – it just feels wrong.’

The modern-day Brazilian outlook is indeed a far cry from the glory days of the 70s when the rainforest was allowed to flourish abundantly. ‘It’s a terrible shame, really, that people can’t just let a good natural display of flora grow,’ said Mottram. ‘Myself, I had the good fortune to be a frequent explorer into the jungle interior back in the day, and things were very different then – you couldn’t see the wood for the trees. You could lose yourself for weeks in there, rummaging around in the dense undergrowth in search of the elusive Amazon delta. And somehow I always emerged with plant matter between my teeth.’

Mottram was particularly critical of the modern practice of areas of razed Brazilian forest being given over to jewellery displays – or Brajazzling, as it’s known. ‘Ah well, fashions come and go, I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘These days, people seen almost ashamed to have a decent forest sprouting all over, but me – I’ve never forgotten the steamy allure of the bush.’

rickwestwell (hat-tips to Sinnick, pere floza and Golgo13)

The 43-year-old told a local TV station that he had arranged the deal after seeing an online advert offering human kidneys to those willing to have their Apple consumer products removed. He confessed that, as a man with near-total kidney failure, he had an ‘admittedly shallow’ interest in the human renal function, and had long been obsessed with what UrinaryWorld magazine recently voted ‘most essential organ of all time’.

The story only came to light after the man’s mother became suspicious after noticing a ‘gaping hole’ in her son’s iPad docking station where the device would usually be charging in preparation for another day fulfilling essential bodily requirements. Her attention was also drawn to the fact that her son no longer seemed interested in his old dialysis machine, preferring to go out playing squash and enjoying a beer afterwards.

‘When he came home that night,’ explained his mother, ‘he had an unusual spring in his step and no problem excreting waste materials via his urine. I knew at once something was up. I wanted to know how he had got enough money to buy a new kidney and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his iPads. I was shattered.’

‘I can’t believe he did it,’ sobbed his mother. He might feel like he can live without it now, but he doesn’t know what losing an iPad could mean. If his other one ever stops working he’ll have no way of surfing Flash-free websites on the move – that could be the end of him!’

This case highlights China’s shocking black market in iPad trafficking. A scarcity of the desirable devices has led many naive unfortunates vulnerable to selling their cherished devices for large sums of money, even in the knowledge that the grim transaction will leave them dangerously short of Angry Birds capability.

Following the recent series of injury scares, Queen Elizabeth II’s trainers have said they expect to make a decision on Friday about whether Her Majesty will be fit for the classic Derby race at Epsom on Saturday.

The majestic royal mare has been suffering with strained withers since landing awkwardly at Haydock Park in May, and has yet to really loosen up in training canters. There would be great disappointment if the monarch is indeed unable to compete in the Derby, as the sight of Her Majesty’s steaming figure thundering around the Epsom turf has become almost synonymous with the ‘Sport of Queens’.

The Queen has an excellent sporting pedigree – few can forget her mother Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s spectacular victory by 30 lengths and a nose at the Gordon’s Gin Handicap at Aintree in 1964. But her trainer insisted this morning that the Queen would not race on Saturday unless fully fit. ‘If Her Majesty were to sustain a serious injury on the track it would be a tragedy for the sport,’ he explained. ‘Prince Charles is definitely not ready to take on the great horses of today, even if he did marry one. And when we tried him out in the Grand National he just kept stopping and talking to the hedges.’

At the end of his six-day tour of Europe, Mr Obama praised Poland’s ‘impressively swelling’ economic growth and ‘well-rounded’ support of pro-democracy movements in North Africa and the Middle East. In a press conference with Poland PM Donald Tusk, the US President said Poland was “one of our most attractive allies, and certainly our closest partner in Europe”.

In response, the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Nigel Elton Sheinwald, released a statement confessing concern that America’s recent appreciation of Britain’s own ‘special relationship’ might not translate into tangible transatlantic economic benefits.

“Is the USA some kind of slag, or what?” He asked journalists at a press conference this morning. “Leading us on like a right little tease – Poland special? They said we were special, the tarts!”

British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed ‘disappointment’ with what he called the ‘fickle values’ displayed by American diplomacy. “When Obama came to see us, he said he wasn’t into huge booming recoveries,” he complained. “Now we find out he’s courting Polish opinion, and all of sudden he can’t get enough of her massive economic capacity – it makes our growth look unimpressively flat, I’m afraid. Now we realise they took advantage of us for short-term political gains – I feel used. Would it have helped if I’d said how dirty some of our foreign affairs can be?”

Reginald Blythe-Partington, the UK consul in Gdansk, threatened to use “every diplomatic means at our disposal” to prevent Poland from signing unilateral US trade agreements to the detriment of Britain. “Basically, if the Poles go and get into bed with America I’ll go straight round Lech Walesa’s house and nut the bastard”, he explained.