In a press conference today the Chancellor insisted that the bail out would be accompanied by tough conditions. In accepting the £300 finance package, Mr Warner has agreed to lend £50 to Jim the plumber to invest in the Queen Mother Gold Cup at Aintree. The winnings are then expected to be reinvested in the fruit machine at the Black Lion quiz night on Sunday night, further boosting Shropshire businesses. The government has also taken a 50% share in Mr Warner’s usual barstool in the snug of the King’s Head. ‘He did offer a double or quits bet on the FTSE rising or falling this week, but we politely declined’.

Gordon Brown defended the move which follows hard on the heels of a previous injection of £500 to Mr Warner’s bank account before Christmas. ‘This swift and decisive action has halted a potential collapse in the fortunes of numerous pubs, newsagents and a bootleg DVD market stall’ claimed the Prime Minister. ‘We have also averted a major crisis in the on-line gambling sector, with the saving of many tens of jobs.’ However, the Prime Minister stopped short of taking responsibility for the significant losses in Mr Warner’s spread betting investments, following ‘unprecedented volatility’ in the performance of Tottenham Hotspur.

New shadow business secretary, Ken Clarke, responded to the bail-out in characteristically robust fashion. ‘Without sufficient controls in place how do we know that Mr Warner won’t just lose all the money by blowing it on banking shares?’

The Hit Squad

A large crowd gathered to watch the big screen at Wimbledon, now dubbed ‘Timmy’s telly’, as Henman made his commentating debut on the Woman’s singles game between Li and Rodionova. However, he was completly out-analysed by Francesco Nova, who was making his debut for SportItalia.

‘He was simply the better man on the day’, admitted a disappointed Henman. ‘When Rodionova broke serve in the 2nd set, he shouted ‘She hitta da ball very nice’. I just couldn’t compete with such verbal dexterity.’ Despite hundreds of tennis fans shouting ‘Come on Tim’ as he prepared to sum up the encounter between sets, he was unable to match the rapid fire delivery of his Italian counterpart. ‘It iz nice sunny day!’ quipped Henmans’s opposite number, ranked 75th best commentator in Italy. ‘Nice tennis, play very good!’

When Tim needed to dig deep and find the character to get himself out of his tongue-tied silence, he simply found that he had no reply to the Italian’s analysis. ‘Always over da net she hit, bellissimo!’ ‘Er, yeah. ‘ mumbled Henman, although his reply went unheard as he was leaning away from the microphone.

When asked if there was any chance of Henman trying again next year, his agent said that he might not be available. ‘Tim is planning to go on Celebrity Big Brother, which starts the week before Wimbledon. Mind you, on this form he’ll be the first one out, so he’ll be probably be free after all.’

Eric Whimhurst, who was forced by his employers to adopt the name ‘Cocoa’ while at work, told the employment tribunal ‘it was a nightmare, I went to work and they would laugh at me no matter what I did. Nobody should have to put up with what I’ve been through.’

The tribunal heard that Mr Whimhurst’s contract specified that he had to wear work clothes supplied by the employers. ‘But the uniform was way too big, especially the trousers. They were so large around the waist I had to use the bright yellow braces they gave me to keep them up. The shoes were much too long. I take a size 9 but they gave me a size 40 and everyone kept stepping on them in the lunch queue.’

At his original interview Mr Whimhurst had also been promised a company car, but claims that the vehicle was completely unroadworthy. ‘The door kept falling off and loud bangs kept coming from the exhaust. Then the steering wheel came off in my hands and flames started to come from the engine and I feared for my life.’ The tribunal heard how other Barnum and Bailey employees rushed to the scene of the crisis and handed him a fire bucket. But when he threw it over the flames, he discovered that instead of containing water it was full of thousands of tiny pieces of paper that only made things worse. ‘This was one of a number of breaches of basic Health and Safety Policies that occurred at the workplace.’

Mr Whimhurst finally broke down in the courtroom as he described the flower his workmates placed in his lapel. ‘For a second I thought the flower represented a rare act of kindness, that they were going to stop being horrible to me. They told me to smell it and trusting them I did so. Cold water squirted all over my face and the others laughed and pointed at me and then, kicked me up the backside. It was horrible,’ stammered Mr Whimhurst through the tears.

The judge listened to all the evidence in stony silence and commented that he struggled to see how anyone could find any of this at all amusing. ‘Oh, only the clowns were laughing at any of it…’ explained Mr Whimhurst. ‘No members of the public were laughing in the slightest…’ he added, causing the other clowns to begin weeping openly in court.

‘Until now, we thought it was an area of abandoned wasteland on the outskirts of Swindon and, as such, it had just been designated as a public open space’, said a spokesman. ‘However, close study of new satellite images revealed a group of people occupying a small hill and so decided to examine further.’

The Moral High Ground turned out to be home to a group of vegan cyclists, who do occasionally use trains and a non-profit car-pool scheme, but always plant trees afterwards. They also spent a lot of time on a particularly high horse. ‘We examined the ground hoping to find carbon footprints, but there were none.’ Hopes of catching out the rather worthy local community by sifting through their rubbish failed when it was all taken to the bottle bank, paper mill or was organically recycled.

However, having occupied an unassailable superior position for many years, it turns out that the local inhabitants have never made any money out of anything and are now completely skint. They have now decided to sell the Moral High Ground to property developers who will use it for a gated community of luxury flats.

Arthur Wilson, 83, admitted he was more surprised than anyone at what happened. ‘I thought I was warming up my cocoa in the microwave at the time’, he explained. ‘I was staring at this fancy glass box and pressing all the buttons and suddenly there’s all this fuss that I’ve managed something amazing.’

Malcolm Stonebridge, owner of the nursing home said, ‘It came as a great surprise to all the staff when Arthur managed to navigate his way through the Videoplus, delay start and long play/short play options and successfully tape a re-run of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. Previously the nursing home has normally had to wait until they get a 16 year old on work experience before any of the residents’ electronic equipment operates correctly. ‘Just last year, one of the young lads managed to upgrade the pacemaker of a bedridden 94 year old widow via his bluetooth mobile. Two weeks later, she was giving step aerobics classes at the local gym.’

Mr Wilson appeared as bemused as anyone by his success; ‘I was looking around for where I had put my cocoa and suddenly I saw Clegg and Compo disappearing down a steep hill in a tin bath,’ he chuckled.

However one of the elderly lady residents claimed that the clichéd techno-phobia of all the old men was part of an elaborate cover up. ‘All the old fellahs just pretend not to know how to use all the electrical equipment so the staff have no idea that they are recording ‘Wet Dream Team’ off the Adult Channel. Once ‘Bonercam’ is on, they know how to use the rewind and fast-forward buttons all right.’

An apparently confused Mr Wilson denied this and added that the nursing home computer must have accidentally downloaded video clips from www.chickswithdicks.com while he was attempting to look at what he thought was the tropical fish tank.

The manufacturers of Love Hearts are launching a new range of sweets aimed at less successful relationships.

The new ‘Hate Hearts’ will follow closely the tried and tested ‘Love Hearts’ formula, but will give couples a chance to say what they feel about each other after they’ve got married and tried living together for a while.

A spokesman for sweet manufacturors Swizzlers Matlow said ‘our research found that our cute messages appealed to young couples who were just falling in love, but we have to accept that more and more relationships are ending in acrimony and bitter resentment. These people simply had no fizzy tasting fruit sweets with which to express themselves.’

To begin with, there will be a general range of confectionary bearing slogans such as ‘pillock’, ‘twat’ and ‘minger’. If they prove successful, more niche products will be introduced. These include packets for the recently divorced; ‘House is Mine’, ‘You Snore’, ‘Hate Your Mother’; A ‘day after the office party’ range will include; ‘You’re Easy’, ‘Arse Copier’ and ‘You’re Fired’.
‘We believe it will be a winner. You can communicate the utter contempt with which you hold someone, while simultaneously rotting their teeth’.

Traditional favourite flavours such as citrus and strawberry, will be joined by new tangy tastes of ‘shower mould’ and ‘petrol’.