In his new Channel 4 series, with accompanying book and DVD, Jamie Oliver demonstrates how other condiments can be used to treat frozen surfaces including cracked black pepper and freshly chopped herbs. The government has supported the campaign with Transport Minister Lord Adonis saying that using local ingredients such as sorrel and wild garlic would reduce the nation’s reliance on imported salt stocks during severe winter weather.

However parents at some schools have objected to healthier alternatives being used to on icy school playgrounds. In Rotherham, parents were seen pushing salt cellars and even ready-salted crisps through school fences after their children refused to play football on a school yard treated with rustic French mustard vinaigrette.

Despite the criticisms, many councils have backed the idea and later episodes of the show will reveal how Hampstead and Highgate have now fully replaced salt across the borough with shaved parmesan and torn basil leaves, although it admits it may have to maintain stocks of freshly milled Maldon sea salt for emergencies.

In other news a driver and four pedestrians were seriously injured after a car mounted the pavement after skidding on a redcurrant and balsamic glaze outside a school in Islington.

MitchellAdcow (with thanks to joe harding and evilsuperstar)

An anonymous source from SO19, the armed division of the Met voiced his excitement in the run up to the games. ‘Personally I can’t wait to put months of arduous training into action, and actually start shooting people. I can’t tell you too much, but we’ve basically got a license to shot dodgy looking brown people. It’s going to be like a state sanctioned version of Grand Theft Auto, with institutional racism thrown in. I can’t wait.’

However most experts agreed that the games appear likely to pass without incident, after which ‘those whacky terrorists will probably just send another couple of nutters to blow themselves up on the tubes again’, leaving Britain free to pursue that bronze in judo without anxiety.

Shandy

‘Celebrity voice overs are an incredibly important part of any TV commercial strategy’ says advertising expert Pete Lampton. ‘Julie’s voice is friendly, reassuring, and very much of the people. Exactly what’s needed to personify the values of 21st century banking. ‘It’s for the journey’ is, in Julie’s rendition, an intensely powerful message.’

Neither Ms Walters nor advertisers knew that the journey’s destination was massive indebtedness for the British public and financial misery for millions. It’s not known whether Ms Walters banks with Lloyds TSB, but Lloyds can no longer afford to bank on Ms Walters, who can command fees of £100,000 a day for praising the troubled bank in a much-loved Midlands accent.

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

Speaking at the South Pole after the earlier departure of the triumphant Norwegian PM, Mr Cameron said he had previously decided to commemorate Scott’s defeat by a similar ill-planned and ultimately doomed gesture of futility that would result in isolation and a slow, lingering death unnoticed by the rest of the world.

‘There was a break during the negotiations at the EU Summit last week’, he said, ‘and I nipped out to the balcony for a quick cigar. Standing there alone while all the other leaders met with their diplomats and advisors, it suddenly dawned on me that here was a chance to make a statement about British values.’ He continued as his eyes watered with emotion, ‘So after everyone else was seated and waiting for me, I sauntered back in and played the British Veto. You should have seen their faces, especially my own diplomats and advisors.’

Mr Cameron has long admired Captain Scott and read all his diaries covering his battle against adversity. He is understood to be particularly moved by the diary entry where faced with dire shortages, and in order to survive, he was forced to eat his favourite husky, Clegg.

Dorset Boy

The two rediscovered episodes are from a 1991 story entitled ‘The Continental Menace’ and show Mr Major in the role of Prime Minister thwarting the evil European Commission on the planet Maastricht. The adventure was found unexpectedly during a clearout by a Mr Cameron of London, who did not initially realise the significance of what he had found.

Original memories of Mr Major’s tenure as Prime Minister, which ran for seven series between 1990 and 1997, were wiped by the Conservative Party and very little evidence survived of the period. ‘It seems strange now but he started out with some very high ratings,’ said a BBC spokeswoman. ‘Unfortunately more and more of his companions were killed off in gruesome scandals that weren’t really suitable for teatime viewing, and he was eventually knifed in the back by the evil Euroscepteks and forced to regenerate into the popular actor Tony Blair.’

‘It’s rather grainy footage and, as with all Mr Major’s adventures, it is in black and white,’ Mr Cameron said. ‘But the story is terribly exciting, with Mr Major and his companions running up and down corridors defeating the evil megalomaniac Delors with his clever ‘opt-out’ device. Unfortunately the last episode is still lost so we don’t know how it ended, but I’m sure it all turned out just fine.’

‘It is crucially important that the UK is a key player in the debates and negotiations of the European Union,’ said Nick Clegg from his lonely bedroom, ‘The only reason I entered politics was to actively and fully engage in debates about the central issues of the day. I did not want to storm out of the debate in a teenage tantrum, just like David did. In protest against his decision I did the only thing that I could do: sit in my room, alone, listening to my favourite music, while everyone else talked about things in the House of Commons.’

‘The missing piece of the puzzle was put in place when I employed some roofers to re-tile over the bathroom and spare bedroom’ he explained. ‘They seemed keen and put up the scaffolding very quickly, but then vanished once the deposit had been paid. One evening the sunlight beamed through the metal pipework from the kitchen door to the cactus collection on the study windowsill, and I saw that this scaffolding was essentially the same structure as at Stonehenge, only not as well put together.’

After the initial discovery the team worked tirelessly to test their new hypothesis, and to work out what final structure was to have been built at the site. ‘The clues led us to the nearest comparable stone age building of Silbury Hill, and a ‘Silbury 2’ constructed on the plain would have been a towering white elephant on the scale of the Millennium Dome or High Speed Rail 2’ claimed the Professor. ‘It was essentially a huge temple to the capacity of a centralised organisation to waste millions of man hours in pointless endeavour. It was obviously planned to be a national piece of work as well – the scaffolding was produced by a sub-contractor from South Wales, which shows that the Government paid lip-service to allocating work in areas of economic deprivation 4000 years ago as well.’

‘We will never be fully sure as to why the Stonehenge hill was not completed but it is likely to have been an early impact of the current government funding cuts’ he concluded.

Professor Smith’s roof has still not been fixed.

Immunis