Students began booing at first, and witnesses say the barracking was mostly good natured. But the situation escalated when the illogical ‘air-lighter than air’ stunt was repeated. One student tried to get onstage and reason with a pantomime dame. Tensions were inflamed when his thoughtful arguments about comparitive buoyancy were dismissed by the dame, and the principal boy.

‘It all kicked off when we asserted that this occurrence was scientifically impossible. The dame kept shouting Oh-no-it-isn’t!’ If that wasn’t bad enough, she and the principal boy managed to rally the crowd round to their side,’ said a witness. It was at this stage that punches were exchanged, and pretty soon conical flasks and mercury filled thermometers were raining down on the stage.

Last night police were trying to calm tensions, and have promised to appoint an officer with an understanding of Boyle’s law and physical principles. In the meantime, the building has been surrounded with mounted policeman on pantomime horses, who at the sign of any more trouble will flutter their eyelids and dance the waltz.

‘We believe it would be premature to recall all the Beetles based on the madcap adventures of this one lovable little vehicle,’ said Volkswagen spokesperson Alonzo Wynn. ‘Of course, there are aspects of the car’s performance that have alarmed members of the public; such as its tendency to drive up on two wheels when racing round the edge of a cliff, but we consider these charming quirks rather than life-threatening faults.’

Racing driver Willoughby Thorndike, who has been defeated in several motor rallies by the cute little VW Beetle, said, ‘Can it be normal for a car to race up the suspension cables of the Golden Gate bridge with no-one at the wheel? Trust me, one day it’s going to go bananas, and kill someone.’

Crosby Short, an associate of Mr Thorndike, admits trying to steal Herbie ahead of a big race only to find himself lurching out of control ‘as if the car had a will of it’s own‘. Mr Short said, ‘I’ve always prided myself on being a henchman with an unblemished theft record. But as soon as I touched the accelerator, the little white Beetle shot forward out of the garage, reared up on its back wheels and did a loop the loop around the walls of a tunnel. Then we drove up a ramp and sailed through the window of a swanky restaurant before parallel parking at 90 miles per hour. I’ve suffered with my nerves ever since.’

Jim Douglas, Herbie’s owner, defended the self-syled ‘love bug’, saying, ‘Herbie is unique. I haven’t owned many other cars that would flash their headlights at a cute little Lancia and then pursue it around the streets of Paris.

‘But I can’t explain what it is that makes Herbie do all these crazy things. Maybe he’s possessed by the ghostly spirit of a former owner, or a Celtic sprite… or it could just be the clutch? Actually, the more I think about it the more I think it’s definitely the clutch.’

Colleagues have described how they watched in horror as Derek Short, from Uttoxeter, Staffs, tried to access Suicidr, a controversial website that allows users to delete themselves from social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.

‘He’d been acting strange for a while,’ claimed line manager Harvey Powell, ‘not updating his status as frequently as he used to and such. Then he started talking about women and football, and how he was too busy playing five-a-side with his new girlfriend’s colleagues to go on his PC at home nowadays – in retrospect the signs have been there for a while now. I feel guilty that I didn’t pick up on it and post something on his wall.’

Another workmate, data-entry technician Sue Dormer, became concerned after Short started to become more extrovert at work. ‘He began to lose weight and act with confidence. Alarm bells started to ring after he told me he’d been playing some form of three-dimensional Scrabble with a real board outside of Facebook. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about. I tweeted my concerns, but nobody took any notice.’ A distressed Dormer described Short’s belief that farms were real places where food is ‘grown’, instead of cute little sources of entertainment with virtual cows and stuff.

A specially trained negotiator was called in to defuse the situation by continually ‘poking’ Short, while a team of electronic counsellors repeatedly accessed his seldom-visited blog in an attempt to improve its hit rate. After a tense stand off, Short eventually relented and agreed to stop looking out of the window at what he termed ‘the real world’, and return to Mafia Wars, to cheers from colleagues.
Suicidr hit the headlines in 2008 after a spate of teenage ‘copycat’ deletions, which left MySpace with virtually no users in certain broadband hotspots, while the Scottish government has responded by posting a draft assisted suicide bill on its Facebook wall, which 60 MSPs have ‘liked’.

Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee wept uncontrollably as he described how his idea to develop a global communications network has at last delivered the results he has waited-for for so long ‘I can’t believe it’ said Berners-Lee ‘At first I hoped that the network would be used to help scientific advances and to speed-up the development of cancer cures through the global sharing of information, but when I heard that Brian’s pizza and garlic bread had arrived safely I was just overwhelmed.’

Twitter addicts were also buoyed by Atkins’s announcement ‘It’s fantastic news’ said Twitter CEO Evan Williams ‘Although having examined his tweets for the past two days I’m concerned that he’s only had one crap, and I hope the pizza doesn’t add to his digestive congestion.’

When interviewed Atkins said that in his haste to announce the safe delivery of his pizza through Twitter he had neglected to tip the delivery driver but said that ‘It didn’t really matter, in fact my pizza was also topped with a free bonus from Luigi’s, which I think was a kind of guacamole but only a bit more slimy and full of bubbles. The guy who delivered it also had a really bad cold, but that didn’t stop him offering first class customer service.’

‘Ideally I would have liked to announce that the free diet coke had also arrived successfully, but I ran out of characters. Still that’s the price you have to pay for being an early adopter of advanced technologies’ said Atkins.

antharrison

Mr Ward, who works at his local PC World at weekends, said he was ‘gob smacked’ on receiving the letter informing him of his success. ‘It was awesome,’ he told journalists. ‘I knew I’d done something pretty cool, but I didn’t think I had a chance of a Nobel Prize. But, looking back, I suppose it was pretty groundbreaking for a PC World guy to give out correct technical information.’

Mrs Knight said she was delighted. ‘That young man deserves the honour,’ she said. ‘I was a bit dubious when he showed me how to attach the mouse to the computer and, to be quite honest, I didn’t think it would work. But it just shows how wrong you can be. In my opinion, Joe is a genius.’

The store said that since the announcement, it had been inundated with messages from around the world. The manager said: ‘Yesterday Bill Gates called to ask Joe for advice on a problem with Windows 7, then we had Sir Tim Berners-Lee ringing asking for guidance. People have been queuing round the block to ask Joe for advice.

‘Of course, it’s partly down to the thorough training we give all our employees at PC World. We once had a young assistant who showed a customer how to detach a mouse from a computer AND where to find the track pad. Brilliant.’ Mrs Knight said when she arrived home with the mouse she went straight to her computer: ‘I couldn’t actually find anywhere to plug the mouse into my Amstrad, but my grandson has a computer with a hole for mice – and it went in there like a treat. He’s a clever one, that Joseph Ward. A bit of an Einstein, I’d say.’

‘We can’t understand it’ remarked a bemused Jez Ritchey, Gadgetz editor ‘it’s a 3G phone/satnav/gaming device all in one sleek widescreen tablet; that sort of thing usually has our models in the throes of ecstasy.’

‘In the end we gave up the whole shoot; poor old Cherie, she tried pouting and smouldering, but you can’t fake that kind of thing for the cameras. We just had to pull publication; it’s a real shame as the December edition is usually our biggest seller’

Chris Mayfield, head of the ‘Lifestyle Publications’ arm of IPC defended their decision to withdraw the magazine: ‘A small, but significant minority of the Gadgetz readership is male. For them it’s vital to see that women are as excited by these vital technological advances as they are. They will lose interest rapidly if they sense that women aren’t genuinely turned-on by such items as palm-sized LCD screen gaming tablets, hand held blu-ray camcorders with remote connectivity and pocket sized… excuse me, I need to visit the bathroom.’

Mr Mayfield returned later to assure us that the January edition of Gadgetz will be in the shops on the 5th of the month as usual. Among the features will be an interview with writer Germaine Greer and poet Tom Paulin, both discussing their favourite 10 Wii accessories of the year.

‘Puppies are so cute, aren‘t they?’ said animal-lover Rolf Harris today. ‘But those last 14 years or so can really drag. The beauty of these creatures is you get the whole roller-coaster of emotions in a day. Just pop a handful of Winalot Prime into the box on Christmas morning, give it a good shake and wait for the ‘Ahhhs!’ as the adorable little fella emerges weak-legged and vulnerable to mess on your novelty Christmas socks. Can you smell what it is yet?’

It’s been no easy feat for scientists to reconcile the conflicting human impulses to commemorate the birth of the Son of God by making a gift of a living creature needing accommodation, food and regular exercise, and to get on the blower to the rescue centre as soon as the bank holiday is over. In one trial problems with a Chihuahua’s body clock caused it to explode unexpectedly during the Queen’s speech and curtail Grandma’s post-lunch snooze with a fatal heart attack. And the Communication Workers’ Union has already lodged an official complaint after a number of pre-packed pets prematurely came to life in transit in what the union has called ‘the opening of a new front in the canine’s War on Postmen’.

But the ‘Man’s Guest Friend’ (TM) has already brought literally hours of pet-owning thrills to countless grateful families. ‘There was fun in the morning as the puppy helped with the unwrapping, relief after lunch as the adult dog finished the leftover turkey, and boredom and indifference by late afternoon,’ said one father. ‘We even squeezed in a festive constitutional, but it was great not having to make that extra night-time walk to the canal with a sack.’

‘We just buried the dog’s bone in the garden and, bless him, he dug his own grave as he retrieved his last supper. All that was left was for the children to learn some important lessons about attachment, mortality and really thinking about what you wish for, before we gave him his final instructions to ‘sit’ by the graveside, ‘lie down’ and then finally, ‘roll-over’.’