Weston’s eye-catching act started as he queued for a flight home to London behind a large and boisterous hen party on the way to Amsterdam. ‘I was running late and getting a bit jittery about missing my flight,’ began the usually reserved number cruncher, ‘so I may have been jiggling my feet a little and slipping my shoes on and off in preparation for submitting them for the obviously important security checks. I saw a couple of the hen night party look at me and nudge each other at that point, but thought nothing more of it. Little did I know it was soon to become one of the most electrifying moments of my life.’

The air of excitement built within the party of friends celebrating the imminent marriage of 29-year-old Niamh Doherty as Weston’s hesitant disrobing inadvertently took on a more flamboyant tone. ‘It was a new airport to me and they all seem to have different rules these days about what needs to go through the X-Ray machines,’ he explained, ‘I saw one man with what I thought was quite a lightweight jacket be asked to take it off, but then a lady wearing a bulkier looking tweedy thing was able to keep hers on, so I found myself with my suit jacket caught up off my shoulders and in my indecision it may have looked like I was sashaying a bit.’

This move caused a ripple of excited giggling to pass through the hen party, which soon turned to cheers and calls for Weston to ‘get ‘em off’ as he prepared to complete the next step of his security compliance preparations. ‘When I realised what was going on it was intoxicating,’ confided Weston, ‘reconciling a set of complex financial figures is very satisfying to me, but to have a group of late twenty-something women shriek in delight as I started wrestling with my belt buckle, well it does put that in perspective. By the time the security personnel had asked me to ‘whip out my laptop’, I’d got totally caught up in the moment. I think it’s what they call in the trade, doing the Full Monty.’

Unfortunately Weston did not have the chance to follow up on Chippendale offer, as Airport security had been called in to deal with the accountant who, surrounded by hysterical hens, was gyrating with his trousers around his ankles and his suit jacket swinging over his head, while refusing to remove a pink cowboy hat thrown to him by the whooping bride to be, and shouting manically about the ‘no touching!’ rule, as airport staff attempted to complete a manual frisking.

He has no plans to make a repeat performance at the local Mountjoy prison, where he is being held on remand for resisting arrest and breaches of aviation law.

‘In recent weeks, we may have given the impression that the House of Commons is stuffed to the rafters with filthy, rapacious grubbers sponging off the taxpayer to feed their indolent lives of immoral luxury,’ the newspaper’s editorial declares. ‘In fact, it turns out that the whole story was written up by a spotty 17-year-old intern who couldn’t read the figures properly and left out the middle column of numbers. Our MPs are in fact the same fine group of distinguished gentlemen and ladies that they have always been. We hope the mistake hasn’t caused any inconvenience.’

scrutiny to end

Like all the M.P.s in Westminster Gordon Brown was said to be very understanding about the mistake. ‘Not to worry…’ he said ‘These little adding up mistakes happen all the time. ‘Alistair and I were just looking at the accounts book again and wondering if we hadn’t made a silly little adding up mistake. It turns out there might not have been a credit crunch after all!’

‘I always had this secret dream that I might one day work in some area of financial management’ said an excited Beyonce, ‘but this TV show means that at last there is the chance that my dreams might come true…’ she said as she practised her audition piece with her calculator and spreadsheet. Contestants have just thirty seconds to impress the judges with their advice on tax returns and deductible expenses. But only a few lucky ones will go forward to ‘Accountancy Camp’ where the heartache and elation of discovering who has the talent to go all the way will be watched by millions of viewers.

‘Ever since I was a kid I used to practise accountancy in my bedroom…’ confessed Amy Winehouse. ‘I’ve sent a few tables of some projected expenses into all the big firms, but even though they kept rejecting me, I always believed I had the financial acumen and auditing skills to make my dreams come true.’

‘This means the whole world to me’ wept Rihanna, after being told that she wouldn’t be going forward to the next round. The judges have been accused of being too brutal with some of the accountancy hopefuls. ‘You call that deductible!’ shouted one of the professionals to a tearful Madonna as he tore up her illegible receipts from some holiday gift shop. ‘Forget it sweetheart. You’ll never make an accountant; you’ll just be an iconic rock superstar for the rest of your life.

‘I’ll come back next year, and the year after that’ wept Madonna. ‘I’ll just keep hold of my dream until I reach the top. As long as I can offset the projected expenses against my partner’s small business on an overseas leaseback account… No, hang on that’s not right…’