‘Through my newspapers I’ve had a long history of identifying mental problems among the public,’ he explained. ‘Purchasing one is a definite clue that something isn’t working quite right. My experiment with repeating the same story about a dead princess every week for 14 years was particularly successful.’

The lottery draw will be shown live on channels that are popular amongst the mentally sprained. ‘Channel 5 is a natural choice for us,’ Desmond announced. ‘Big Brother has really boosted the audience figures amongst people too stupid to blink, and they’re just the people we want to help by taking a quid off them.’

But by supporting health charities, Desmond insists he is doing good. ‘20% of our profits goes towards helping exactly the sort of people who gave us 100% of our sales. It’s win-win.’

‘You could argue that the education system shouldn’t be producing these people,’ said schools secretary Ed Balls today, ‘but the important thing is to treat the symptoms not the causes. The problem at the moment is that too many idiots are walking among us unnoticed, some in positions of authority, and there’s no way of telling till it’s too late. This scheme will provide transparency and allow people to make informed choices about who they talk to, bank with and elect.’

Those affected by the proposals include users of emoticons, people who assume others know what on earth they are talking about or even care, Chris Moyles listeners and anyone claiming that the scheme won’t ‘effect’ them. In addition, the police will be given new on-the-spot ‘duncing’ powers to issue ‘S-plates’ to pedestrians who stop without warning in the middle of crowded pavements or high-five in public in anything other than a spirit of grave irony. Anyone falling foul of the new regulations will find themselves put on the Sense Offenders Register and forbidden from expressing opinions, using the phrase ‘I know what you mean’ without medical evidence that there’s even a chance of that being true, and answering any question without observing a 24-hour ‘cooling-off’ period.

Despite the Government’s enthusiasm for the plan, a small number of commentators have warned that the economic recovery could be stalled by the cost of producing ‘S-plates’ for celebrities, pundits, professional sportsmen, astrologers and their readership, most drivers, religious fundamentalists, clients of debt consolidation firms and all employees in the services industry – a fear not diminished by the failure of bankers to invest in signage industry stocks. But shrewd manoeuvring by Gordon Brown has already secured cross-party support for the scheme after he assured MPs that after the election the Labour Government would exempt elected representatives. The move has earned the delighted Prime Minister a number of pats on the back from loyal Cabinet ministers seeking a new home for the ‘Kick Me’ stickers none of them remember dressing in.

‘Up till now, the effects of the virus have been relatively mild in the form of sufferers pulling doors that say push, filling out the postcode in the wrong box and asking BBC website readers to email about why they don’t have the internet,’ said W.H.O. chief Margaret Chan. ‘But all the time we have been looking for signs of mutation and the European elections last Sunday provided us with all the evidence we needed. Widespread support for UKIP and the election of Nick Griffin and his associates across the continent sounded every alarm bell we have.’

The pronouncement marks the first stupidity pandemic since 1990 when John Major became Prime Minister, Home Alone was the biggest grossing film and Jimmy Savile was knighted.

Although there is no known cure for stupidity, W.H.O. have embarked on a strategic programme of placing pamphlets inside copies of Chat, OK! and Nuts and are recommending that people stay at home and do not watch Channel 4 or Granada Men and Motors. The stupidity pandemic is the latest in a series of health scares such as the ever-present swine flu. ‘We tried to tell people that swine flu hadn’t simply gone away because of MPs expenses, but they didn’t take any notice. They were too stupid.’

For years the project’s development was overshadowed by the more ambitious quest for Artificial Intelligence, but scientists working in Seattle accepted that A.S. was a more realisable ambition within their own lifetime. Yesterday they finally unveiled the domestic computerised robot ‘Kevin’ who is so stupid that every day its owner will experience a wonderful life-affirming sense of their own human superiority. ‘You tell it to open the door and it pulls the door into its own face.’ explained proud project leader Carl Kinear. ‘You ask it the capital of Argentina and it shrugs and says ‘Madrid?’ Ask him what ‘Kevin’ actually stands for and he will explain ‘Er, Computer enhanced something, hang on, is computer with a c or a k?.’ This is one seriously dumb machine.’

For decades psychologists have reported computer-users feeling a sense of worthlessness and inadequacy as their machines asked them technical questions they didn’t quite understand. To ensure that digital technology actually improves the quality of life, scientists finally realised that the key was to make robots even dumber than humans are.

Artificially stupid Kevin is supposed to help around the house, but actually spends most of his time sitting in the kitchen watching daytime TV. He flicks through gossipy magazines like Bella and Take-A-Break! and then puts them in the wrong bin. Artificial Stupidity has previously only been available as a by-product of the computer industry, in certain printers that churned out fifty pages of blank paper or spell-checkers that rejected perfectly acceptable words.

But now the ultimate in A.S. will soon be on sale at Dixon and PC World making Artificial Stupidity available to all. And if asked whether you should take out the extended warranty, Kevin will say ‘Very much so, it’s such good value!’

see also:
Robots ‘have failed to take over the world’