‘It doesn’t help that all these Guineas are hot, by the sea and full of poor people,’ said American businessman Dirk Lukavic. ‘I’ve even heard that two of them are side by side, but I’m not sure which. Somebody really should have spotted that at the planning stage. All we need is some signposts so it’s clear which one does oil, which one does aluminium and which one does drugs.’

Others have had similar problems. ‘When I arrived at the airport I saw a crowd of people waving signs reading ‘Welcome to Equatorial Guinea’,’ said British journalist Jake Hennessy. ‘But when I looked a bit closer, I could see some people were holding up other signs that said ‘Welcome to Guinea-Bissau’ and even ‘Welcome to French Guinea’. It really made me feel uneasy as I’d never knowingly travel somewhere the French have been.’

International observers had been concerned about the erosion of the three states’ identities since George W. Bush’s tendency to refer to them variously as Guyana, Guatemala, Guadalajara and even Guantanamo. The problem was then compounded when the leaders of each nation decided to swap identities at a UN meeting in 2008 to see if any of the Western countries would notice. Since then no one has been sure whether the three men returned to govern the right country, with many citizens of the three states too scared to say anything.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promised to resolve the situation by sending UN Place-Keepers to each country, but the plan descended into chaos when each of the planes was re-routed to a different Guinea and the parties’ luggage was sent to the wrong place. As angry UN officials failed to understand why they couldn’t have their bags if they’d also been flown to Guinea, riot police were called in to calm things down but proved powerless to help as no one could determine whether or not they had jurisdiction.

Observers are now fearful that the confusion may soon spread to Papua New Guinea, while Ghana and Gambia are said to be nervous.

Textbook

‘Those who said we wouldn’t get anywhere with our pandering and warmongering aren’t looking so clever now, are they?’ said former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. ‘Sure, he gets a few details wrong and adopts a slightly patronising tone, but Bush also says some genuinely nice things about us. Most importantly, though, he seems to know we exist. I honestly think we’ve finally arrived.’

The news has electrified the country. Britain immediately updated its Facebook status to read ‘Yay! Got a mench in Dubya’s book. LOL! OMG I’m sooooooooo excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ It is now phoning up all its friends, casually asking how they are before subtly introducing the subject of Bush’s new book into the conversation.

But while Australia, Canada and New Zealand seem genuinely pleased for Britain, France, as ever, has tried to rain on its parade. ‘They kept changing the subject and feigning that annoying Gallic nonchalance,’ said a Downing Street spokesman today. ‘When they were actually listening, they kept asking silly questions like ‘Wasn’t zat an illegal war?’. They’re just bitter. Still, they’d obviously read George Bush’s book because they pointed out that he’d spelled Britain’s name wrong.’

And with the UK now firmly on the map, Brits are keeping their fingers crossed that this is the break their country’s been waiting for. ‘They’re making a TV documentary about the Iraq wars,’ continued Blair, ‘and Britain might be in it! No promises, mind. They may have to get Texas to play the part of Britain because it’s a bigger box office pull, but you never know. But if we do get the gig, word is that we’d be a shoo-in for the best supporting actor gong at next year’s awards ceremony at The Hague.’

StoopydeGunt (with hat-tips to ronseal and De-scribe)

‘It’s not like we were subtle about it,’ said senior Republican John Boehner, ‘We thought in a country like this we had no chance against an ordained minister like Jimmy Carter in 1980, so just for kicks we set up Ronald Reagan, a twice-divorced Hollywood actor with the brains of a radiator as the Christian candidate against him. And he won. Twice. Holy fucking crap, how did we get away with it?’

Following mixed success with relatively colourless candidates in the 1990s, Republican chiefs went all-out for laughs by putting forward George W. Bush, an educationally sub-normal alcoholic draft dodger, as the candidate for pro-military born again evangelicals.

‘We were laughing our asses off on election night in 2000,’ said Boehner. ‘When he won by a blatant fraud in the state run by his brother and senior officials said he hadn’t been elected president but appointed by God, I thought, OK, they’re bound to get it now. But nope, he did it again four years on. George W. Bush. George W. Freekin’ Bush! What is WRONG with you people?’

However, in view of the recent mid-term elections, where massive gains were recorded by the Tea Party movement backed by Sarah Palin, a known ‘Big Oil’ supporter who backs creationist education — ‘I mean, hello! Fossil fuels? The clue’s right there in the goddamn name!’ — Boehner has conceded that the joke has turned sour.

‘The Founding Fathers warned about the perils of democracy and now we can see why,’ he told reporters. ‘Americans are just too dumb to be trusted with dangerous pointy instruments like pencils every other year. We’re outta here and I don’t care if that does mean six more years of Obama. And besides, with Wall Street bailouts proceeding as planned, ongoing war in Afghanistan and decent healthcare still the privilege of the wealthy with the Democrats all the while claiming to be the party of change, it’s not like there isn’t going to be somebody out there still taking the piss.’

‘He’s nearly there,’ Mrs Bush revealed at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, where the family have been living since leaving the White House in January. ‘I think the penny may finally drop in the next few weeks that he isn’t the leader of the free world any longer.’

Mr Bush, 62, first showed signs of noticing that something was up in late February, when Mrs Bush says he asked her where ‘the nucular codes box’ was, referring to the briefcase which had been carried around behind him by a Secret Service agent every day for the previous eight years.

‘Then in late March we had a call from Condoleezza Rice to say hello,’ Mrs Bush added. When her husband asked why he hadn’t seen any of his Cabinet members for three months, a convenient excuse was found, she admitted. ‘We told him that Dick Cheney had shot them all and they were in hospital. Otherwise it would all have been too much too soon.’

More recently, Mr Bush has taken to standing forlornly in the corner of his lounge at home in Texas. ‘At first we thought he had gone a bit nuts like Cheney,’ his wife said. ‘But then we realised that, deep down, he was beginning to notice that he hadn’t been in any oval rooms for quite a while.’

If Mr Bush does cotton on this summer, as his wife seems confident he will, then he will have made significant progress since 2001, when it took him more than a year to understand that he had been elected president.

‘When we first moved in to the White House and George hadn’t realised what was going on, that Al Gore just got madder and madder,’ said Mrs Bush. ‘So at least this new guy doesn’t really care what George thinks. Which is funnily enough what a lot of people have been saying to me for a while, actually.’

‘We enjoyed his autobiography and all, but hearing it every day? It’s always ‘when I was a mixed race child in the last days of segregation’, or ‘an interesting thing happened when I was editing Harvard Law Review’, I mean, really…’ complained an anonymous staffer, ‘Say what you like about the last guy, but he always had a funny story about what he’d just seen on the Flintstones, and just had this special way of making you feel smarter and better about yourself.’

It is a sorry change of fortune for a man who previously held the most powerful position on the planet. The lack of contact from potential employers had initially been put down to a problem with the Bushes’ forwarding address and new telephone number, but after numerous assurances that those who needed to ‘knew where he lived’, wife Laura suggested he start leafing through the classifieds. Despite proudly referencing his Most-Improved World Leader Award 2003 and membership of the Pretzel Survivors Trust, Bush’s CV attracted a string of knock-backs from companies politely declining his services on the grounds that he was ‘probably over-qualified’.

‘I guess my track record intimidates people,’ he reasoned today. ‘There’s not that many two-termers out there, so people have always tended to look at me like I’m a little bit different.’ In one recent attempt to conceal his past, Bush told interviewers that he’d spent the last few years trying his hand at running his own business, but the move backfired when the chair of the board suddenly started weeping and repeatedly saying ‘We know, we know’. ‘It must be a tough time for businesses or something,’ concluded Bush. ‘Geez, that new Obama guy must have really screwed things up.’

Although Bush did what he could to plan for his future by growing the market for Peace Envoys, employment prospects for ex-leaders aren’t forecast to improve with Gordon Brown likely to swell the labour pool before next summer. That said, at an interview yesterday Bush appeared to have made a breakthrough. ‘I told them I’d been in a coma for eight years and only just woken up, and they nodded at that one. I think it really struck a chord.’ Fingers crossed, Bush is expecting an offer any day now from a family-run start-up called ‘Lehmans’ Car Wash’.

America today woke up to the news that George W. Bush will remain US president for a further four years after officials from the Electoral College ruled that he had failed to secure the grades needed to graduate from the White House. A sub-clause of the US Constitution requires a serving president to be held back and forced to repeat a term if he does not make the necessary progress.

‘There were clear signs during the President’s first term that led us to suspect he may have special leadership needs,’ said a spokesman for the Electoral College today, ‘and the second term did nothing to dispel those concerns. We put in place an intensive support programme, but despite some progress in subjects like walking and eating, the President’s end-of-administration results mean he’s not yet ready to join wider society.’

Told of his lack of progress in English, George Bush said he was ‘disappointmented’ but insisted he would make the grade next time round. ‘I am getting special tuitioning in English and extra helpings with geography. Though I already know quite a lot about the olden days.’

‘I just don’t understand it,’ said disappointed mother Barbara Bush today. ‘In his letters home George told us everything was going so well – I could tell from all the smiley faces in the pictures.’ But Barbara and George Bush Snr. remain hopeful that their son will make further progress, and that perhaps one day they will get to attend his graduation ceremony. ‘I know there was all that fuss over his entrance exams and whether he got enough marks to beat that Gore boy,’ said Barbara, ‘but since then he seemed to be making real strides.’

The Bush Presidency will forever be associated with the terrible images of September 11 2001, when the nation woke to see its President taking twenty minutes to finish a simple children’s picture book.

Genghis Cohen

‘I’m delighted with the draw,’ said a beaming Ahmadinejad afterwards. ‘You know how it is when you have the ideal present for someone – you’re just praying it’ll be their name you pick. We’ve had a research and development facility working for eight years for just this day, and now is our opportunity to show the world how much we appreciate the contribution the US is making to a better, safer world.’

A visibly nervous White House spokesman welcomed the result of the draw. ‘Are we worried? No! Why would we be worried? Of course we’re not worried,’ he said. ‘We’ve been wanting to strengthen our ties with the Iranian administration for some time – not to mention our missile defence system – and although it’s a shame president Ahmadinejad has let the cat out of the bag, it at least gives us plenty of time to, erm, prepare a really heartfelt thank-you letter.’ A CIA spokesman later denied any link between the immediate raising of the US’s national threat level and the Iranian president’s promise to deliver a gift of ‘devastating proportions’.

Other draws included Silvio Berlusconi getting North Korean leader Kim Yong-il, who is apparently planning to give him some extra tips on state-controlled television. Meanwhile Robert Mugabe only smiled when asked if he had drawn Gordon Brown as he was spotted by reporters leaving a Harare gift shop with some outsize foam fingers formed into a V-sign. And Nicholas Sarkozy was believed to have drawn Angela Merkel. His suggested present idea was met with a slap in the face from Germany’s first female Chancellor.

Genghis Cohen