In an interview to mark the Diamond Jubilee, the Queen’s grandson claimed that the Duke’s support had sustained the Queen during their 65 years of marriage. ‘My grandfather has been at her side for her entire reign,’ Prince Harry claimed, ‘and she often says she can only do all that she does with his love and loyalty.’

But the Palace disagreed with Harry’s claims. ‘Her Majesty is pleased to make it known that what actually gets her through the day is not The Duke of Edinburgh but the Royal supply of gin and Dubonnet,’ read a statement. ‘It’s hard enough having one’s phones tapped and coping with this succession of morons they keep sending over as prime minister, without a loose-tongued Greek racist threatening to sink the lot of us.’

BBC Royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell said the statement was ‘unusually frank’, but an accurate reflection of the Queen’s sentiments. ‘The Queen normally allows her staff to draft these statements, but this one is written in her own writing,’ he said, ‘the spidery but still legible hand of an old woman still in command of her formidable faculties, if slightly tipsy and smelling of Bombay Sapphire.’

‘Of course Her Majesty’s husband is devoted to one,’ the statement went on. ‘But if any member of the Family ought to know that the only thing that gets one through is a quick snifter of juice every half hour, it’s Harry. Now, where did one put one’s glass?’

The two rediscovered episodes are from a 1991 story entitled ‘The Continental Menace’ and show Mr Major in the role of Prime Minister thwarting the evil European Commission on the planet Maastricht. The adventure was found unexpectedly during a clearout by a Mr Cameron of London, who did not initially realise the significance of what he had found.

Original memories of Mr Major’s tenure as Prime Minister, which ran for seven series between 1990 and 1997, were wiped by the Conservative Party and very little evidence survived of the period. ‘It seems strange now but he started out with some very high ratings,’ said a BBC spokeswoman. ‘Unfortunately more and more of his companions were killed off in gruesome scandals that weren’t really suitable for teatime viewing, and he was eventually knifed in the back by the evil Euroscepteks and forced to regenerate into the popular actor Tony Blair.’

‘It’s rather grainy footage and, as with all Mr Major’s adventures, it is in black and white,’ Mr Cameron said. ‘But the story is terribly exciting, with Mr Major and his companions running up and down corridors defeating the evil megalomaniac Delors with his clever ‘opt-out’ device. Unfortunately the last episode is still lost so we don’t know how it ended, but I’m sure it all turned out just fine.’

‘In 2012, consumers will want to feel more connected and in-touch than ever before,’ said Panasonic managing director Makoto Uenoyama. ‘The best way to do this is simply to remind them all the time how dreadful the economic outlook is, so our new sets come with this depressing news ticker pre-installed and constantly visible, even when you are watching Frozen Planet or Emmerdale.’

The new devices also include 3D technology and ultra-high resolution displays. ‘Now our viewers don’t just have to watch the European Union crumbling to dust, they can actually see the individual drops of sweat on Sarkozy’s brow and the growing wrinkles of Angela Merkel’s turgid frown in vibrant detail.’

Added Uenoyama: ‘They are 3D too, so that you actually feel that you are standing among the flags outside the European parliament as they are taken down one by one, starting with the Union Jack. It’s an experience like no other – except maybe the World War One scenes in Downton Abbey.’

‘After the resounding success of the new governments in Italy and Greece, the obvious next problem to solve was Britain,’ said German chancellor Angela Merkel. ‘Our experience is that nobody there has a bloody clue how to run anything, not the trains, not the economy, nothing, not even in the House of Lords. But we asked around a bit and it turns out that British pubs are absolutely stuffed to the rafters with people who know exactly how to run the country, but have no interest in being elected. Just the technocrats we’re looking for.’

Mrs Merkel said that the UK government would resign ‘within days’ to make way for a new Cabinet of bleazed know-it-alls each claiming some half-baked idea to get the country out of its mess. The markets rose sharply on the news, indicating that most people think this would be a substantial improvement on the Coalition.

‘We already have a two-point plan for fixing the economy, a one-stage approach to mending the transport system, and a couple of vague ideas about transforming education and making petrol 90% cheaper,’ said a spokesman for the incoming government. ‘The only thing we can’t agree on is what to do about immigration – we really want to send them all home, but we’re not sure who there’ll be to serve drinks and change the barrels if we do that. What we need is somebody with an even vaguer grasp of the issues than us – I know, we’ll ask Theresa May to decide.’

Sources close to Mr Brown are claiming that he and Mr Blair reached a deal in 2006 that Mr Blair would move on after four or five years, handing over to his former Chancellor. But Mr Blair’s aides deny that such an agreement would ever have been struck. ‘There’s no way Tony could have reached such a deal,’ said a spokesman. ‘You only have to look at how little he’s managed to achieve between Israel and Palestine to see that there’s still not a snowball’s chance in hell of agreeing to anything with Gordon.’

Diplomats and officials across the region and in Western capitals were scrambling to relieve tensions after Mr Brown’s comments were overheard while he was making a phone call from the back of his car. ‘It’s that Sue’s fault,’ said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ‘When is she going to remember to turn his bloody microphone off, the silly cow?’

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, was more sanguine. ‘Maybe Gordon Brown wouldn’t be all that bad,’ he said. ‘We were worried that John Prescott would be next – he stood in for Tony for a week last summer and ended up causing two Intifadas and punching the prime minister of Lebanon in the face. I’d rather have a mobile phone thrown at me than go through all that again.’

See also: Brown wants to be middle East envoy

Business Secretary Vince Cable has been forced to apologise after a tabloid newspaper discovered that he had left bags full of confidential Liberal Democrat principles in bins outside his constituency office.

The principles were retrieved by a journalist who said they were completely shredded and unrecognisable. ‘They were filthy, covered in a sort of overpowering blue goo and totally unusable’.

Mr Cable’s office insisted that none of the principles were in any way sensitive or important and that nobody had been put at risk by their complete abandonment. ‘To be honest we’re not sure what the point of them was in the first place,’ said a spokesman. ‘But we hadn’t intended to leave them where people would find them – we’d asked Oliver Letwin to get rid of them for us.’

There was widespread anger with the looters yesterday evening, after a series of unscheduled walkabouts by thugs including Hampstead ringleader ‘Red’ Ed Miliband, London gang kingpin Theresa ‘Ask The Pigs’ May, and a shadowy, rarely-seen figure known only as ‘Prime Minister the Rt Hon David Cameron MP’.

‘We have to accept that we were not prepared for the consequences of our actions,’ said a senior looter in Ealing, west London. ‘I took the decision to kick in the windows of my local Comet and help myself to a couple of MacBook Airs in good faith, but I might have done things differently if I had known this would lead to Boris ‘the Mayor’ Johnson descending on the neighbourhood within hours, spreading chaos and confusion and terrorising local businesspeople in Latin.’

Residents in Balham, south London, were shocked after Harriet Harman appeared unexpectedly at around 2pm, causing thousands of pounds’ worth of irritation and shattering windows at the local Holland & Barrett with her blunt feminist agenda. In Ilford, east London, around 100 local people stood together in the High Street with brooms and dustpans to see off an attempted walkabout by the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, although many weren’t sure whether he was actually there or not as his arrival made virtually no difference to anybody.

Efforts are being made to shore up the looters’ presence tonight with an additional 6,000 nine- to sixteen-year-olds being brought in from the Home Counties to support the metropolitan rioters. But tensions are already mounting in the central suburb of Westminster, where around 650 politicians are reported to be gathering in preparation for a whole afternoon of mindless outrage and violent expostulation. ‘We’ll do what we can to contain these yobs,’ said one looter. ‘But you have to remember that these people will stop at nothing to get what they want – we can’t guarantee public safety if they set Vince Cable on us.’

‘I’m crestfallen,’ admitted Mr Miliband. ‘My leadership has been suffering from aggressive, griping Balls for some time. I thought that surgical intervention would help, but scans of my party headquarters have shown that the malignant Balls is still there, ready to finish me off at any minute.’

Mr Miliband’s elder brother David also suffered from an acute attack of leadership problems last year, leading to suggestions among medical experts that the condition is hereditary. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not, though,’ said one unnamed shadow Cabinet member. ‘Our suspicion is that Ed has been a victim of passive leadership, which can be just as dangerous as doing the job yourself.’

There was some good news for Mr Miliband, who has responded very well to a sudden injection of Murdoch in recent weeks, which experts say will have extended his prognosis in the short-term. He insisted he would be back at work ‘very soon’ and that his problematic Balls would in no way limit his ability to do his job. ‘I’m not going to let my Balls beat me,’ he said bravely. ‘But we’ve all got to go some time, so I’m going to live life to the full. I’ve already sent off for tickets to the Labour Party conference in September, if they’ll have me.’