Dean Hammond, 29, fell back into his old ways with a fast-paced run and a free weights session before a breakfast of grains, berries, natural yoghurt, fresh juice and spring water.

‘I can’t believe it happened again,’ said Dean, ‘I suppose it just comes down to a lack of will power. I’d love to be normal and watch hours of crap TV while pigging out on junk food and cheap lager like my mates, but I can’t seem to stick to the routine.’

Dean said that staying on the sofa was easy for the first couple of weeks of January because the streets were full of New Year runners and the gyms were overcrowded. He admitted: ‘No self-respecting runner would go out on New Year’s Day anyway, with so many people out there wheezing and stumbling in embarrassing designer jogging kit, so that gets me off to a good start. It’s similar with alcohol. I have a great time getting arseholed every night, and my poor work performance doesn’t matter because everyone else is on the wagon and buzzing around at double speed.’

Dean said that his cholesterol and blood pressure had been rising nicely and he’d put on about ten pounds, and he was even hopeful of getting on some long-term drug regimes – but then the old cravings began to return. One positive thing Dean found was that he has been able to negotiate an 11-month gym membership for half the price of a full year. ‘Their January takings provide their profit for the year, but then they get all this spare capacity.’

He said he was becoming resigned to being different, but he did enjoy being a slob for a short time. ‘What I may do in future is just take January off to give myself a break, and not beat myself up about it. There’s plenty of time for that when I start my triathlon training in February.’

The game charts the progress of the player from the first hint of a dry throat through to the full blown cold and the bronchial after effects, having to chose the best strategies to remedy the illness and balance the demands of the workplace with the desire to retire to bed with a hot water bottle (available as a Nintendo accessory from £39.99).

The player may select a variety of occupations and complaints to contend with. On the office worker setting, fellow employees will generally mutter ‘wimp’ and avoid you in case you are still infectious; on ‘fashion designer’ colleagues will rally round and suffocate you with empathy; whilst on the ‘wife’ setting no one notices that you’ve been ill at all.

Available in all formats, the WII version boasts several innovations. The remote sinus inhaler which the player is allowed to use after successfully dealing with several tricky diagnostic tests is a hailed as ‘an industry first’, alongside the ‘Nose Barrier’ where the strength and volume of the player’s sneeze is measured via the supplied sensor which can be attached to any tissue or handkerchief.

The new game is designed to appeal to the after school market. But Zak Hughes, spokesman for the games developers, said ‘We believe the game can provide younger age groups with a valuable learning experience related to the work ethic and the real interface with fellow employees.’

Mr Hughes added ‘With the enduring popularity of TV programmes such as ‘Casualty’ and ‘House’, we are hopeful of developing the franchise further in the direction of medicine once we have perfected the nunchuk scalpel.

‘This new receptionist seems to think she is in charge,’ complained one patient, a Prime Minister of the UK. ‘Once it was easy to get an appointment with the doctor. Now it’s bleeding impossible. And, I swear, if I don’t do something about my Dalek problem, it could be fatal.’

Dr Who appointed the new receptionist, Hilary Green, in an attempt to meet new best practise guidelines created by the Department of Health. Green came highly recommended by her previous employers, South Norwood Health Centre, where she had rationalised patient numbers, driving the more time consuming ill patients away from the practice.

With Earthlings in danger of being killed by an outbreak of Daleks, many pushy patients had hoped to get Dr Who’s ear over the Christmas holidays. But the new receptionist held firm. Under her new regime, Dr Who is not doing any more home visits, and all patients, Earthlings included, are expected to make their way to the doctor’s surgery, during office hours.

‘If the Dalek outbreak hasn’t cleared up by Monday, I suggest you come to the surgery in Alpha Centuri,’ the receptionist told the Prime Minister. ‘Don’t be put off by the length of the queue outside, because only a fraction of those waiting survive the absence of oxygen.’

‘But now we’ve engineered a compound that almost exactly replicates the 75% KFC composition of male breast tissue, we’re confident that whether men want to augment, reduce or just give their moobs a bit of a lift, we can give them the confidence they need to get their shirts off in public again. So long as they get their backs waxed too. No-one needs to see a hairy crack.’

The recipient of the first moob job, a Mr Brian Drennan from Stoke, said he was delighted with the results of his surgery, despite enduring nipples that ‘stung like a bastard’ for the first few days after the op. ‘My wife told me my moobs were lovely just as they were, but I knew they weren’t a patch on the man boobs I’d sported as a younger man,’ said Mr Drennan. ‘But since the operation, I can’t stop showing them to people. Which led to a bit of explaining when my boss walked into the gents to find four men cupping my breasts and claiming they really ‘couldn’t tell the difference’.’

As builders, darts players and former rugby professionals sign up in droves to get their moobs done, Mr Drennan has been so encouraged by his surgery that he’s already considering other procedures. ‘I’m looking into having one of those beer gut bands fitted, which will mean I can only drink small amounts of white wine spritzers,’ he said. ‘And I know there’s a lot they can do these days for wrinkly skin. But until I’m convinced they’re entirely safe, I’ll leave it a while. After all, Bollox injections are a really big step.’

The commission have warned would-be servants of ‘he who cannot be named’ to check with their GP before embarking on a lifestyle choice that involves consuming nothing but other people’s unhappiness and depression. The human body needs a balanced diet; proteins, carbohydrates, as well as over-symbolic human emotions.

A spokesman for ‘Lord V.’ thanked the commission for their advice, hinting that from the New Year his followers would be calling themselves ‘Death and fresh salad with fruit juice and moderate carbohydrate eaters’.

The Diet and Health Advisory Commission is now said to be scrutinising the diet of the vampires from Twilight, urging them to extend their diet of human blood to include five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

The decision comes following a ruling that the previous messages were too one sided, and unfairly restricted the freedom of speech of the tobacco companies. Kenneth Clarke, an advisor to British American Tobacco said ‘People know that smoking is bad for them, they’ve been told that a million times over. What they may have forgotten is that holding a cigarette makes you look hard and glamorous and a little bit of a rebel. We need to remind people that ‘Smoking Can Seriously Damage Your Reputation As A Goody-Goody’.

Even more controversially, the tobacco companies are to be allowed to put warnings on health foods suggesting that consumers might prefer to have a big fat cigar rather than another boring oatcake with hummous. Packets of wholegrain breadsticks are to feature prominent messages saying ‘Warning; eating health foods will not give you a rush of nicotine and a relaxed feeling of well-being.’ Brancakes will say ‘Warning, this food is dull and tasteless and a lot less gratifying than a good smoke.’

But it is the positive cigarette messages that have got health campaigners up in arms. Dr Brian Ellery of the BMA said ‘we’ve spent years trying to get people to give up smoking, but how can we compete against cigarette packets with the message ‘Smoking is very relaxing’ and ‘Smoking is the only excuse you have for going outside the office and talking to that gorgeous new receptionist.’

‘Many people don’t want to go without a fuss,’ said Karl-Heinz Struther, director of Indignitas.  ‘Some want to make a point, while others simply want a genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience.  With a life-exit package for every taste, ambition and demographic, we’ve had no dissatisfied customers yet.’

Men from all over Europe are flocking to the clinic for the chance to take their mid-life crisis to its logical conclusion with the ‘Jim Morrison’ deal, a Paris-based weekend break that includes drugs, alcohol and sex followed by drowning in a bath.  An adventurous few have instead opted for the ‘Stranglewank’, the auto-erotic practice popularised by former INXS singer Michael Hutchence and film star David Carradine.

Oppressed women, meanwhile, are queuing up for the ‘Sylvia Plath’, a moving farewell involving a dingy room, a gas oven and the posthumous demonisation of a person of their choice.  And car enthusiasts have been honking their horns in delight at the ‘James Dean’, a splendid one-off opportunity to drive a classic Porsche head-on into a truck in a reconstruction of Hollywood’s notoriously dangerous Mulholland Drive.

Among failed bankers the ‘Wall Street Plunge’ has proved very popular.  The brochure describes it as ‘a full gravity descent down the outside of the Swiss Re tower in the heart of Geneva’s bustling financial district, followed by a champagne reception at the bottom’.  Wealthier clients have opted for deals from the à la carte Indignitas Premium range, including the ‘JFK’, in which half the fun is not knowing whether the fatal shot came from the lone gunman in the book depository or the CIA agent on the grassy knoll, and the ‘Princess Diana’, in which a beered-up chauffeur will quickly show you the sights of Paris before suddenly inviting you to join him up front.

But despite the booming business, it isn’t all proving to be plain sailing for Indignitas.  An investigation is under way into the passing of a man who had apparently planned to die spectacularly in front of thousands during a gruelling series of shows at the London O2.  ‘Unfortunately he didn’t make it that far,’ said Herr Struther.  ‘We think he may have been accidentally dispatched by the doctor sent to help Farrah Fawcett on her way.’

‘We thought we’d spell it out clearly,’ said a despondent Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer. ‘Illnesses make you weaker – that’s what they do. There are no recorded instances of a rejuvenating bout of typhoid or a restorative case of the clap. I cannot stress strongly enough that life is a degenerative condition. Sadly, there’s no known cure for the stupidity that makes people swallow all these old wives’ tales, and as a doctor it really hurts when you can’t help a patient. Emotionally, that is, not physically. There‘s no pathogenic link.’

However, the media has been quick to criticise the study. A Daily Mail editorial attacked its ‘tedious capitulation to scientific rigour and lazy reliance on overwhelming empirical evidence‘, while a poll on page 24 found that 100% of its readers thought laughter was the best medicine. The edition also carried an interesting feature on the cancer-preventing properties of sherbet and an extract from Silvio Berlusconi’s autobiography in which he credits his full head of hair to the wind changing direction in 1957 and his hair staying that way.

But for 82-year-old Eileen Clarke, a retired housewife from Didcot and lifelong advocate of home-spun medical wisdom, the research has raised a doubt about time being the greatest healer. ‘My husband Alf is 91 now, and if I’m honest he’s getting worse rather than better. He’s smoked since the age of seven, and it’d never done him any harm – all four foot eight of him – right up until the tracheotomy.’

Although Eileen claims it was the Golden Delicious that kept her husband clear of doctors for so many years, she’s now concerned by the lack of carrots in hospital meals. ‘After his bladder’s got him up each night, the poor love loses his way and the nurses discover him trying to find a bed in the women’s ward down the corridor. Mind you, I did always tell him that sitting that close to the TV to masturbate wouldn’t do his eyes any good.’

Genghis Cohen (similar to a piece previously submitted by Snarkos)