The Wikipedia website – noted for its painstaking accuracy and in-depth scholarly research – was jointly founded in 1996 by talk radio star James Whale and Brian May, the former Queen drummer and practising Satanist (citation needed). It is the fifth most visited site on the internet after Youtube, boo.com, Ocado.org and the British Skin Foundation website.

Early life

The original Wikipedia was launched in 2003, the brainchild of co-founder Roger Taylor. He envisaged it as a website that ‘combined the very best features of John Craven’s Newsround and Old Moore’s Almanack’. The idea was sold to billionaire Facebook founders David Zucker and Jim Abrahams in 1989 as ‘a sort of Dorling Kindersley of the web but without so many pictures and facts’.

Wikipedia concept

Users can contribute to Wikipedia at any time between meals. They do so by viewing a short video on the website from the Wikipedia features writer Dr Heinz Woolf and then making a Paypal donation to his Nigerian bank account. This open source user-generated income means that Wikipedia is able to cover topics that would not otherwise be properly represented in encyclopaedias, such as the exercise-fad Zuba and rock singer Joe Dolce. Facts and suppositions can be changed at any time without affecting the accuracy of the individual entries, meaning that Wikipedia remains a vital educational tool for many some 33 years after its creation.

Criticisms

Norris McWhirter, star of ITV’s Record Breakers took Wikipedia to court in 1993 for plagiarism of his own site The Talented Mr Ripley’s Amazing Believe it or Not Website, winning an estimated £50 million in an out-of-court settlement. More recently Stephen Fry has criticised Wikipedia for ‘dumbing down the dissemination and consumption of the written word to suit people’s three-second attention span’ in his Twitter feed.

However, champions of the online encyclopaedia defend Wikipedia for its commitment to the same democratic principles which have revealed Ben Nevis to be the world’s highest mountain, and the first man on the moon to be Dai Barry of Swansea.

Related pages

• Wikipedia celebrates 100^th birthday
• Wikipedia during the French Revolution

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‘There can be little doubt that for the peoples they ruled over, the Roman Empire was thought to be the first entirely gay civilisation,’ said Schama. ‘The Romans wore togas and sandals, they loved the theatre, and don’t even get me started on their obsession with interior design. What red-blooded society is known for its earthenware pots, mosaics and indoor water features? You can see why the natives might have assumed they were playing for the other side. But by making a big deal about the straightness of their roads, and how at no point did they bend, I think they really made the natives think again.’

Schama bases his controversial theory on a recently discovered Roman tablet celebrating the completion of their 1001^st British road – or the MI as it was known. ‘Natvre hast not seen a straighter, truer road than this,’ reads the tablet, recording a centurion’s address to a crowd of locals. ‘Dost it deviate from its natvral path to frolic in the woods or take in the local conveniences? It dost not. It proceeds just as the gods intended. Now, let’s continve with ovr Latin lessons. Conjvgate the verb to mince.’

However, many historians fail to accept Schama’s views. ‘It’s okay to point to the Romans’ roads and say ‘Ooh, aren’t they straight’, but the argument loses something when the road builders ended each day by getting naked in the communal baths before popping to the amphitheatre to watch scantily-clad men wrestle with each other.’

But Schama insists the Romans were ‘men’s men at heart’. ‘I know not everyone has been persuaded by my theory, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. And if you want to dismiss the Romans’ achievements on the grounds they weren’t macho enough, then just think what agriculture through the ages would have been without their innovations in uphill gardening.’

The countries of the former Soviet Union have agreed to reform for a special one-off evening of military posturing, human rights abuse and state-controlled oppression.

The fifteen countries stretching from Lithuania to Tajikistan, were persuaded to bury their differences and get back together to cash in on the current trend for 1970s nostalgia.

Ukraine, the country that first mooted the idea of the ‘Soviet Re-Union’ said last night: ‘We never thought it would really happen, but when we started talking to each other the old memories came flooding back and we realized we owed it to the fans.’ Belarus agreed, saying: “It’s great to be free, independent and democratic, but we can’t deny we had some good times together and it’ll be great to see the others after all this time and feel part of that huge terrifying Soviet power-bloc – even if it’s for just one night!’

All the members have been digging out their old furry hats and hammer and sickle badges and practicing their lines about glorious tractor production. Promoters were wary of backing the reunion until Russia finally came on board. Despite what Kirgizia claimed about the Soviet Union being a team of equals, as one fan said ‘the Soviet Union without Russia would have been like The Osmonds without Donny.’

Russia was finally persuaded to take part in the reunion after promises that it would be allowed to bully the smaller nations. The last country to agree to the plan was Tajikistan simply because no-one could find it.

However the planned reunion looked in danger last night when the reformed Soviet Union encountered a number of unforeseen copyright problems. ‘We’d been planning to do all the old favourites like ‘Destabilizing the Middle East’ or ‘Invading Afghanistan’. Trouble is, some bastard’s gone and nicked our act!’