‘Yes, the rumours about me being Superman are true,’ admitted Kent.  ‘I only wish I had some sort of power to stop the story getting out.  But the ability to fly and lift up trucks and see through solid steel is no match for Twitter.’

Kent, originally from Smallville, Kansas, admitted that it was becoming difficult for him as a journalist to question Metropolis celebrities while he himself had gone to court to stop people revealing that he was actually a superhero from the Planet Krypton.

‘I’d be interviewing innocent, upstanding celebrities like, say, a Top Gear presenter, TV chef or one of the stars of Downton Abbey, when all the time I was hiding this dark secret that I had used the law courts to keep my own secret out of the newspapers.  I thought, if these people don’t do it, then why should I?’

The so-called ‘Superman-injunction’ prevented the media from even reporting that there had been an original court injunction, and is said to have incredible powers similar to those of Clark Kent’s alter ego.  It can make celebrities seem like quiet, upstanding citizens, disguising their real identities as sexual superheroes capable of breath-taking acts about which ordinary people can only fantasize.

‘I feel so relieved now that the Superman-injunction is out in the open and I am no longer living a lie,’ admitted Clark Kent in a Daily Planet interview.  ‘In fact things would be perfect if only I hadn’t discovered that Lois Lane was shagging Ryan Giggs.’

Colleagues at the Daily Planet were reportedly stunned as Kent arrived for work bereft of his cunning disguise and trying to hide his features behind a newspaper. ‘It was suddenly obvious,’ stated fellow reporter Lois Lane, ‘I looked up from my morning coffee and there was Superman, doing the crossword at Clark’s desk!’ I don’t know why the citizens of Metropolis hadn’t noticed before to be honest.’

Superman’s arch-nemesis Lex Luthor has also expressed surprise at the revelation but believes that, in hindsight, the clues were there. ‘I thought it was a bit odd last week when, during a battle against my henchmen, he suddenly stopped blasting us with his heat ray and started blinking rapidly, muttering ‘It’s either fallen out or the bloody thing’s melted again.’ Next minute he’s on his hands and knees yelling ‘nobody move or you’ll step on it’.’

Kent’s exposure as Superman is the latest in a rash of superhero unmaskings, following hot on the heels of revelations regarding the caped crusader Batman. Billionaire playboy, industrialist, and philanthropist Bruce Wayne was named as Gotham City’s dark knight after a receipt for the Batmobile’s MOT and a bill for the Artexing of the Bat-cave’s ceiling were found in the bins behind Wayne’s Gotham City mansion. Ironically the discovery was made by reporter Clerk Kent, who was writing an article on the importance of shredding documents as a way of avoiding identity theft in the wake of the government’s new superhuman DNA database and ID card scheme. This article is still available on the Daily Planet website, complete with upside-down pictures by photographer Peter Parker.

jp1885 (thanks to Genghis and Mary Evans)