But council officials claim that the travellers should expect to be treated like any other member of the public. Carole Fischer, a Communities Liaison Officer, has defended the council. ‘As decent, law-abiding, tax-paying members of a minority group, travellers are incredibly important customers of ours and we need to make sure the ‘Council Experience’ is as enjoyable as possible.’

‘If we’ve learned one thing from the private sector, it’s that customers love to be hounded to fill in surveys or leave feedback. We need to find out if there’s anything we can learn from the travellers’ experience, and a regular 360 degree review of our procedures is really key to our quality system. This way, the residents should see a statistically significant improvement in performance when they move 100 yards down the road, and we start the whole process again.’

So far, the travellers have been battered by feedback requests from over 30 departments by post, telephone and loud hailer. ‘The Diversity Officer was the most annoying’, claimed O’Hara. ‘She bellowed her questions through a public address system that encircled our camp.’

‘We told her we weren’t interested and that we already had double standards. But she wouldn’t give up. We nearly cracked when she added a background of wistful, Irish pipe music to her demands, it was a blessing when her speaker cables went missing. Although according to her own pamphlets, it was a bit racist of her to ask us if we knew anything about that.’

Amnesty International has entered the debate, claiming that endless questioning about trivial matters is a form of torture. ‘When people arrive on your doorstep, banging on about what a good job they could do for you and confusing you with their weird phrases and expressions, it’s no wonder people feel intimidated. We think they should pack it in and move on. I’m talking about the council’s canvassers obviously, not the pikeys.’

The local authority intends to continue with its questioning however until they are sure of a 100% satisfaction rating, and has been buoyed by positive feedback from bailiffs, who had particular praise for the air quality, the leisurely two weeks spent sitting around before the eviction, and the opportunities to appear on television.

He will then be surrounded by a team of girters, including International Flonking Committee President Jack ‘Frenchie’ Bogge and Cowes 2012 Charman Lord Po, who will join hands and dance in a circle around him, while he spins around in the opposite direction to the girters and flonks his dwile at them.

Lord Po said the event was a ‘big moment’ for the 2012 Cowes Flonking Organising Committee (Coflog), adding that 23 million ticket applications had been made by almost 12 people, which showed the Games had ‘higher levels of support than any previous international flonking event’.

Despite glitches in the booking system, caused by Committee Secretary Ada Scroggins’s telephone breaking when it fell off her milking stool, 10 out of the 12 applicants have been allocated seats in the Field next August, the others having been reserved for ‘Monsieur’ Bogge and Lord Po, although it is open to them to hand them over to corporates with a client base interested in the commercial possibilities of flonking at the highest international level.

Officials are hoping that the 2012 championships will not see a recurrence of the 2008 ‘swadger’ controversy, when contestants were suspected of using a dwile knitted from man-made fibre instead of the traditional Dutch cloth. Both Flonkers and Girters will also be randomly tested to ensure they have not been sampling ale from the gazunder used between snurds.

Frenchie Bogge emphasised that the International Committee would not tolerate any lowering of standards: ‘The jobanowl (referee) has been instructed to levy drinking penalties on any player found not taking the game seriously enough.’

The redecoration of the Girting Chamber was completed on time and just under the budget of £45.00, and plans are well advanced for the post-championship ‘legacy’ which will see the Chamber reverting to it’s previous use as the public bar of the Stoat and Flagon Inn, available for functions and weddings, at pre-legacy prices, although the pub will also consider offers from West Ham.

Nurse Amanda Carstairs, 19 and wearing an all-in-one stretch fit costume that left little to the imagination, told our reporter ‘We’ve been gagging for this for years, and now it’s here I just couldn’t wait to get stripped off and jump in with the girls’.

Just a few yards away in the hospital ward sick patients, many of them World War Two heroes, lay in bed unable to move, forced to listen to the sounds of the nurses cavorting in the £20 million wave machine. Relatives of Ethel Mulhooney, 78, assured us she would have slammed the organisers of the insensitive frolic when she woke up from her anaesthetic, if only she hadn’t been waiting more than four months for her hip replacement.

Back in the Nurses’ Social Club things were getting steamy as the girls took it in turns to launch themselves from the springy diving board into the waiting throng below, and propelled themselves up and down the pool with flailing arms and legs in what they termed ‘doing lengths’. When invited to ‘come and join us’- a clear invitation to strip and participate in the riotous party – our reporter made his excuses and left.

Staff at the council offices were unavailable to comment last night, but Pamela had clearly worked up an appetite, shamelessly calling her unsuspecting husband from her state-funded mobile phone and saying with apparent innocence “Don’t worry if you don’t get this, but I’ll pick up a Chinese on my way home. Remember Nathan has karate tonight.’

Ironduke

‘Our centre offers the perfect place to keep the island’s key demographic occupied,’ said founder, Margret Briscoe, ‘and is ideally situated just a short bus ride from Sandown’s glamorous benches, bingo halls and fracture clinic. And for grandchildren, it’s great to be able just to switch off for a few moments safe in the knowledge that their doddery relatives won’t come to any harm in the blanket pit.’

Attractions at CodgerWorld include theme park favourites such as the Tea Cup ride, where pensioners are seated at tables and challenged to get more tea in their mouth than in their saucer, and the Dodgems, where drivers must guide their mobility scooters around a pedestrianized track and avoid potentially fatal crashes at speeds of up to 2mph. There is also a chill-out zone where overexcited geriatrics can relax in comfy chairs in front of re-runs of Countdown, and the temperature throughout the park has been set to a pleasant 27 degrees, allowing some elderly visitors to undo their duffel coats in the summer months.

Although the centre has received a positive response from most visitors, Mrs Briscoe admits that there have been some problems. ‘Queuing is an issue as it can take a little while for each visitor to get up the giant slide, but we just can’t get the stairlifts to go any faster. Luckily most pensioners think the queues themselves are one of the rides, but for those who really don’t have the time to waste, we have express ‘Eight years to live or fewer’ queues.’

‘I haven’t had so much fun since last week’s bridge night,’ said satisfied customer, 85-year-old Ethel Crosby, proudly wearing her I-Can’t-Remember-What-I-Came-Into-CodgerWorld-For badge. ‘Fracturing my hip on the aerial runway was a low point, but thankfully they sold replacements in the gift shop. Mind you, I wish I’d picked up some incontinence pads before I went on the trampolines.’

jp1885 and Qorbeq

Wilcox met attractive divorcee Anna Sheppard, 37, on the local common when his West Highland terrier Flint started playing with her Jack Russell bitch Molly. The sight of the two small dogs rolling happily around in the grass together prompted other dog owners to start referring to them as an engaged couple.

‘I made a wry comment about how dogs are lucky not to have to bother with corny chat-up lines, which made her laugh,’ said Wilcox. ‘Next time they met, they were even cuter together, so I made a crack about Flint going through his sex-crazed teenage phase and she smiled and nodded.’

In the past few weeks, however, wet weather and other commitments have restricted Wilcox’s dog-walking activities. More seriously, Molly has become increasingly indifferent to Flint and has begun playing with a boisterous springer spaniel called Charlie.

‘Anna was obviously embarrassed that time when Molly started snarling at Flint,’ said Wilcox. ‘That’s probably why she didn’t reply when I said what a typical bitch, always falling for a bit of rough.’

With only two weeks before his annual holiday in Thailand, Wilcox is keen to see some progress in the relationship. However, he admits to being frustrated that it is so dependent on the whims of two unpredictable animals.

‘Well, if it doesn’t happen between me and Anna, so it goes, I’ll know it’s the dog’s fault,’ he chuckled ruefully. ‘Either that or because of the time she spotted me masturbating in the woods behind her house.’

The gypsies claim that the Acacia Avenue residents lead grey, dull, and pedestrian lives, keep their dogs on leads, force their uniformed children to go to school, rarely have romantic camp fire story telling gatherings, and don’t know how to tell fortunes. Stevo added:
‘These folk could make an effort to fit in with the rest of the community by painting their houses in wonderful rainbow colours. They could at least try and exude a delightful roving spirit even if they’re stuck in nine-to-five jobs and live in pebbledash boxes. I’m sure they must have many fine non-roving traditions, but all we have to look out on is this ugly uniformity. We are not prejudiced, but unless the council acts, there could be trouble.’

But a spokesman for the Acacia Avenue Residents Association Mr Bill Smith, hit back at his romany neighbours, saying ‘It’s the gypsies who should try and make an effort to fit in with the rest of the community by pebble dashing their garishly painted caravans. And even if they don’t have nine-to-five jobs, they could at least try and exude a grey, dull, and pedestrian lack of roving spirit. If something isn’t done, there could be trouble.’

A spokesman for the Isle of Wight Council said that its community relation’s department had plans to bring the two communities together. He explained; ‘We want to build bridges by encouraging the two sides to experience aspects of each other’s culture, so we are arranging for the gypsies to learn how to play whist and bridge and for the residents of Acacia Avenue to take-up selling pegs and bareknuckle boxing.’

Also coming soon; ‘NewsBiscuit headlines on International Maritime Signal Flags’. Are you part of a large merchant or military fleet of ships? Want to keep up with the latest satircal news parody headlines, such as the hilarious ‘I am operating astern propulsion!’ Just send us a morse code message using one of those great big flashing light things on the side of your ship…

Arthur’s widow Maisie, 75, tearfully explained that her late husband was meticulously polite all his life, and believed it was good manners to answer all correspondence promptly. ‘He was a good man,’ sobbed Maisie. ‘He believed in good, old fashioned manners and efficiency. He served 45 years in the Ministry of Agriculture and always boasted that he would clear his in-tray every day before leaving work. But just lately he became very depressed by the over-whelming number of emails he was getting. He was struggling to keep up with answering them all properly.’

Mr Spriggs first bought a computer three years ago to keep in touch with their son Barry, who had emigrated to Australia. Mrs Spriggs explained that all was well for a couple of years, and he even managed to keep up with acknowledging all the various joke circulars; forwarding round chain letters and petitions to ten friends; and politely declining invitations to help out potentially wealthy Nigerians. ‘But in the last few months the number of messages went up and up until it was thousands a day. Arthur was really fed up but he felt he just had to answer them all properly. That’s the way he was brought up, and it killed him in the end.’

Police investigating the incident found that the last 438 messages in Mr Spriggs’s sent folder read: ‘Dear Sir, I refer to your esteemed correspondence of the 18th inst. I beg to inform you that the length and girth of my penis is adequate for the requirements of my dear wife. I therefore must regretfully decline your kind invitation. I remain, sir, your humble servant, Arthur Spriggs.’