‘I know a lot of people think that my former husband has been at the wheel of the Department of Energy and Climate Change,’ said Ms Pryce today, ‘but despite what the evidence might suggest, in fact I was in the driving seat all along. It is therefore only right that as I prepare to clear my name of charges of perverting the course of justice, I stand aside and allow another Liberal Democrat to be brought into the Cabinet. Perhaps Chris Huhne, for example.’

Although commentators are now suggesting that this could be the end of Ms Pryce’s career in frontline politics, she remains upbeat. ‘If they do give my Cabinet job to Chris Huhne, no one will notice if I turn up and do it instead. Have you seen photographs of us? You can’t tell us apart.’

‘Few people consider what it’s like to be in our shoes,’ admitted Pepe, 32. ‘Clown wages are beyond a joke. We don’t get paid for the time we spend stalking children through their dreams. Out-of-hours visitations are classed as voluntary work, but this isn’t a charity. We need to put custard pies on the table.’

The Prime Minister has so far refused to buckle to a pay increase, although privately he’s known to favour improvements to clowns’ working conditions. In a private meeting with Nick Clegg last week, it’s thought that Cameron admitted, ‘if I don’t do this, Pagliacci will kill me in my sleep.’

Hughesroland

Residents of the street near Huhne’s grace and favour home alerted police after they were woken at 3am by ‘the repetitive sound of amateurish chiselling’ and occasional muffled cries of ‘for fuck’s sake’.

Officers then followed a trail of powdered asphalt which led them directly to Huhne’s address where they discovered a ‘warmish’ chisel in the boot of Huhne’s Capri, instantly recognisable with its lowered suspension, flared wheel arches and front and rear spoilers. Assorted driving paraphernalia was later removed from the premises including a receipt for ‘go faster’ stripes from Halfords and a king size poster of Nicky Lauda which had been hanging in the Energy Secretary’s bedroom.

Huhne claims he was looking after the chisel for a friend and that a Clarkson DVD found in his glove compartment was planted there by his vengeful ex-wife. Police are also believed to be in possession of text messages sent between Huhne and friend ‘Peter X’ in which the pair describe Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond as ‘ace’ and discuss the giddying effects of taking a corner at sixty. More incriminating, however, is Huhne’s post on an internet stone masonry forum in which he enquires as to the correct angle at which to apply force to asphalt in order to ensure maximum fissure.

Meanwhile pupils at St John’s Infants were dismayed to find their former stone guardians in ruins; chief among them a raised section of concrete which the children had affectionately dubbed “Bumpy”. Headmaster Lucian Morgan said ‘Bumpy and his asphalt chums have saved the lives of countless generations of schoolchildren following their installation in 1987 after little Tony Perkins came second in a game of chicken with a Cortina. I’ve tried to explain all of this to the children but how do put something like this into words?’

And following Nick Clegg’s comments on the Andrew Marr show, Huhne’s fluffy dice appeared to be hanging by a thread. Clegg told Marr ‘we as a Government want the highest standards of probity to be in place in everything that is done by Cabinet members. If found guilty, there’s the possibility of a Speed Awareness course and a minimum of three points on his licence. But of course, he’ll probably pass those on to his wife.’

‘They have that innate affinity that marks out all the great synchronised swimming teams,’ said Steve Parry, BBC Sport’s swimming pundit. ‘It’s their shared sense of direction that’s most uncanny. When David suddenly lurches to the right, Nick instinctively follows – they are inseparable. In many ways they remind me of Torvill and Dean, but older, flabbier and with two Deans but no Torvill.’

As the two men proudly modelled their trunks for the press – a pleasant mid-blue with a yellow stripe up the bum crack – reporters predicted medal success for the pair.

‘Nick adds much to the pair’s chances of winning gold. He’s a born follower, and, after two years of hard training, can sync his own movements seamlessly to that of David. He’s a natural in the water, making barely any splash in anything he does. Conversely, the key to David’s leadership of the team is keeping his movements entirely predictable and never disappointing his loyal supporters.’

The British hopefuls will face serious opposition at the Games in the form of the EU’s Merkel and Sarkozy pairing. ‘That couple managed to quash all comers in their European outings so far. They certainly got the better of the British team before Christmas when the Clegg-Cameron team drifted hopelessly apart and David found himself embarrassingly alone in deep water.’

But the British pair remain hopeful. After performing their highly-praised Sorry-Mr-Mainwaring, Stupid-Boy routine for the cameras, Cameron and Clegg finished off with a carefully choreographed manouvre in which both pinched their noses and waggled their heads before sinking slowly without trace beneath the waves.

Immunis

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

Sally Pinnock, 26, claimed she had no idea that her posting would have such dramatic consequences. The mother of two young girls, Beckieee (7) and Shazzam (4), went on to explain exactly what happened.

‘I apologise profusely for the problems caused by my ill-informed tweet yesterday. I had no idea that not only were my words upsetting to true Bieber fans, but by adjusting the TCP packet containing the tweet with a negative SYN value that it might somehow invalidate the ARP cache in my ISP’s routers, leading to a possible buffer overrun, race condition and severe packet loss for all network users. I compounded this accidental error by appending seventy-two bytes of hexadecimal code to my tweet which seemed to have triggered a previously unknown vulnerability in Cisco’s IOS router code, leading to unauthorised yet silent privilege escalation and hijack of eight of the core DNS servers for the .COM network. In addition, after carelessly using Photoshop to create a naked image of Bieber with well-known British TV comedian, Harry Hill, I may have by chance discovered a bug in Adobe’s JPEG discrete cosine transformation code, as the resultant JPEG file by pure chance contained rogue executable code that somehow managed to build a botnet of around 150,000 compromised Windows XP and Vista computers by around lunchtime.’

‘I assure everyone that I have learned from this, and in future, I will keep my thoughts to myself, however I must add that I still think Bieber takes it up the bumhole **ATX++++cf74f3e797a4a3d0b040b89419c.’

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 Clegg’s existence has been postulated for some time as a means to resolving strange inconsistencies in the Standard Political Model, while remaining barely detectable itself.

‘The Clegg is very tiny and only capable of weak interactions,’ explained Professor Jim Al-Khalili, ‘However, despite exerting only a very small force, it appears to play a key role in providing the mass for some of the larger political elements.’

Scientists finally made the breakthrough by bombarding a political vacuum in the House of Commons Collider with high energy levels of scorn and derision. This eventually caused the Clegg to appear, albeit only for a nanosecond, before rapidly vanishing back into the ether.

‘This brief sighting could help to explain a lot of things,’ said Professor Al-Khalili. ‘The Clegg represents a stumbling block, but if it does exist then it may provide the key to how we all ended up where we are today.’

Scientists are fascinated by the Clegg particle because it has a strange ‘reverse spin’. This means that whenever it tries to go one way, it always ends up going in completely the opposite direction. The Clegg also bridges the gap between matter and anti-matter, existing in what experts believe is a perpetual state of ‘doesn’t-really-matter’.

Despite the excitement, many scientists remain sceptical about the findings and claim that the Clegg is just an insignificant blip that will probably fade away in time.

Meanwhile, others are hoping that it may be possible to harness the power of the Clegg for good. ‘It may seem like something from science fiction,’ said Al-Khalili, ‘but in the future it might be possible to split the Clegg, releasing political power of such magnitude that it may be able to light up very a small torch.’