In an interview, the former Labour education minister said, ‘Constituents often come up to me and ask how they can prevent politicians from having daft ideas. When one lady suggested the right to smack a government minister might do the trick, I was at first pretty disparaging. But then she gave me a swift wallop just to set the boundaries, and I realised that she was absolutely right.’

Lammy has set out his support for smacking in his new book, ‘Putting the Boot In’. He argues that more physical chastisement directed against Coalition ministers could have prevented the urban riots of summer 2011. ‘Just think,’ he said, ‘if people had been able to go up to David Cameron and give him a few smart slaps around the face, they’d have got all that frustration out of their system instead of having to smash windows at their local Comet and steal a couple of laptops.’

Mr Lammy, who admits to smacking his three- and five-year-old sons, said he came round to the ‘smack a minister’ idea when he realized it wouldn’t apply to him. ‘There’s no point smacking backbench opposition MPs,’ he said. ‘We’ve still got another three years left on the naughty step.’

Writing via a Home Office dispatch, May declared that ‘any parent worth their salt’ has a full working knowledge of Donaldson’s books, and that it was ‘desirable that anyone wishing to work with children and young adults must also be familiar with the stories.’ ‘From now on,’ she continued, ‘prospective employees must not only have a clean criminal record, but also be able to minutely describe the physical attributes of a Gruffalo – wart and all.’

Controversially, the new knowledge test is to be applied retrospectively, with existing workers who have already had a CRB check being re-examined. ‘I have been working with troubled teenagers for over twenty years,’ explained inner-city youth worker David Morris, ‘but I have now been informed that I’ll have to abandon the kids in my charge to a life of crime unless I can repeat unaided the first stanza of ‘Room on the Broom’. The community centre’s going to pot while I bone up on some bloody witch and her overcrowded transport – I’m all for car sharing but what kind of example is that to set?’

Probation officer Sheila Bringford is also facing difficulties: ‘out of the blue the young offenders centre I’m attached to wanted me to write an appreciation on the art of Axel Scheffler; and is now demanding to know not only the circumstances in which I got six points on my driving license, but what animals feature in ‘A Squash and a Squeeze. How the hell should I know? I’m tearing my hair out, I’m down on my knees – the nearest I’ve ever got to reading a children’s book is the Da Vinci Code!’

However for some prospective employees, the new system has been a positive boon; ‘I’ve got quite a chequered past and it was looking unlikely that I’d get the post of private tutor to the royal great-grandchildren – that was at least until I was able to correctly summarize the plot of ‘The Smartest Giant in Town.’ Now I don’t have kids, so what a stroke of luck that I stumbled across this information while searching for something on the internet. ‘It’s amazing what comes up when you Google‘detonating Semtex’.’

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has blasted the scheme, accusing May of being ‘delusional’: ‘silly old Theresa, doesn’t she know? There’s no such thing as a Gruffalo.’

In a statement released by the Lib Dems, they explained that since David Cameron had fostered Mr Clegg as part of the coalition agreement, he has become a different person. ‘If we take him back, it will take years to get ‘our’ Nick back. We asked him who he loved the most, he said that the Tories were his favourite parent.’

But despite the apparently cosy relationship with the Mr Clegg, the Conservative party has also moved to distance themselves from being his legal guardian. ‘We may have brought him a backbone for Christmas, but that is only because we have some more controversial legislation to get though in the new year’ a spokesman from their Millbank Headquarters told us. ‘But the last thing we want is to be responsible for him. We only have him because the Lib Dems elected him leader in the first place. We cannot be held responsible for their mistakes.’

Meanwhile Nick Clegg himself has run away and plans to come forward as soon as there are desperate appeals for him on the news.   No plans for any appeals have been made so far.

Perks

‘I can’t take all the credit,’ said Mydil. ‘Top marks, or at least E grades, go to the staff and pupils, whose lack of wilful disruption on the day of the visit was worthy of praise, or at least absence of condemnation. The school has been firmly rooted in the bottom ‘inadequate’ band for years, but satisfactory puts us just outside the top 65 percent. The floor’s the limit.’

The report singled out ‘variable’ standards of teaching and ‘low-level’ task setting as worthy of comment, such an improvement on the previous ‘woeful’ and ‘non-existent’ that the school’s governors were moved to hang a banner from the school fence saying, ‘OFSTEAD SAY WERE SATISFACTORY’, bits of which were still there the next day. This was followed by an entirely uncritical piece in the influential local newspaper, the Middlesbrough Sun. Within days, applications from pushy, or at least not completely nihilistic, parents started to trickle in.

‘Some people say you should aim higher,’ said one mother, ‘but satisfactory’s good enough for me. If everything in my life were satisfactory I’d have no complaints.’ But not everyone is so enthusiastic. Another mum who noticed her kids developing airs and graces has threatened to withdraw them from the school. ‘Satisfactory gives kids unrealistic expectations and fails to prepare them for the realities of life. They were born inadequate and if their upbringing has anything to do with it they will die inadequate.’

Defending the school’s new motto, ‘Satisfaction guaranteed’, Mydil rejected accusations that satisfactory performance fell short of providing satisfaction. ‘When you listen to that seminal 1965 Stones hit, Mick Jagger clearly had no difficulty achieving a good outstanding; it was satisfaction he really craved…Or maybe it was ‘no satisfaction’ he was really after if you take it literally. Yes, I’m changing our motto to ‘No satisfaction guaranteed’. That should keep everyone happy, or at least not completely miserable.’

A Scottish school teacher has defied critics of the way he he has fused science, sport and maths to enrich the lives of the troubled kids under his care. ‘If a kid in my class doesn’t know that a golfball with 350 dimples employs a Magnus Lift, well, he deserves a 7-iron towards the knackers,’ said Archibald McAughtrie (Handicap 18).

McAughtrie added that too many 11-year-olds in care today have failed to understand that the ball does not travel in an inverted parabolas, but follows an impetus trajectory. For this reason, he lined them up against the lower-school gym wall and fired 3-irons at them.

“I’ve always tended to close the face a little early on a 3-iron, resulting in a power fade,” said the teacher. ‘Mind you, all this was years ago and I thought it had all been putt to bed.’

Bryan with a Y

The team encountered problems as they tried to capture him. “We prodded him with a net but still he played possum. Eventually we offered him a blanket, and he sat down and nibbled holes in it.”

The team housed the boy, who they’d named Cecil, in a facility with other insect-raised children. “They’ve had great success rehabilitating Jasper, a boy brought up by wasps”, explained Harbody. “He’s gone on to live a fairly normal life, although he’s still a bloody nuisance at picnics.”

But Cecil’s happy time at the facility was cut tragically short when he fell to his death from a window overlooking a street light.

“His funeral was somewhat unusual”, admitted Harbody. “The others thought cremation was the obvious choice – moth to a flame, kind of thing, but instead I’ve mounted him on some card with a big pin.”

‘I’ve searched all the farms locally, but I still haven’t found any evidence that Buttons lived there. All I can think is that my parents had to send him to a farm a bit further afield. I’m still hoping to find Buttons one day, not least because the farm sounds like the type of place I might want to send my golden retriever when she starts getting old.’

While searching for Buttons, Mr Morse is also keeping an eye open for the rabbit sanctuary where his pet Flopsy went to live, and the pond where his goldfish suddenly relocated.

‘I just can’t cope any more,’ she said. ‘I cook all the meals, drop them off at school, do all the washing and cleaning. ‘I’m the one who reads with them after school and at bedtime. All he does is chase them up the stairs every night going ‘Raarrr!!!’. That’s it!’

‘He’s not a bad person,’ she continued, ‘it’s just he thinks that’s all there is to being a dad – chasing them up the stairs on all fours going ‘Raarrr!!!’.’

Immediate neighbours of the Hurrells have also spoken of their frustration at what Dan tries to pass off as being ‘good with the kids’.

‘He’s a nice enough bloke to talk to, but every night it’s the same,’ said Hannah Morgan. ‘Seven thirty, on the dot: stomp- stomp-stomp, ‘Raarrr!!!’, stomp-stomp-stomp. In the garden, too. They’re outside playing nicely when, all of a sudden, the patio doors open and then it’s ‘Raarrr!!!’ all the way round the swings, across the decking, into the house and back out again. For ages. And let me tell you, those kids can scream. We just close the windows now as soon as we hear the lock on the patio door go.’

Following this criticism, Dan is now receiving help from consultant psychologist, Dr Fiona Grace. ‘Chasing the kids about while going ‘Raarrr!!!’ is fine every now and then, but ideally it should be complemented with other, less loud and chase-y forms of parental interaction. If not, it can manifest itself in adulthood as anxiety, shyness and a chronic phobia of roaring and stairs.’

‘I’ve spoken to Mr Hurrell about this and he now understands the error of his ways,’ she continued. ‘In fact everyone’s being very supportive – apart from his father, that is, who burst in halfway through our session and chased him around the room and up the stairs going ‘Raarrr!!!’.’