Just for 5 minutes you can dream that Messi will join your club

With the news that Lionel Messi is parting ways with Barcelona, every football fan can briefly indulge his fantasy that Messi will want to join a wind swept, dour English team. For a fleeting moment you can imagine that he will want to trade sunny Spain for getting kicked up and down your local pitch.

Remarked one fan: 'He could go to PSG or Chelsea but I suspect he'll plump for Gosport. We've got one wooden stand, a spare ball and all the pies he can eat'.

Another said: 'Our pub team can always use someone a bit nippy'. Said one Akela: 'There will always be a place for young Lionel, in our under-9s cub team. But he will have to supply his own woggle'.

Rioters to phase out petrol bombs by 2040

The Royal Society Of Low Emission Street damage (RSOLES) has announced plans to end the use of petrol bombs in the next 23 years.

Barry Neanderthal of Bermondsey explained. 'We encourage all responsible rioters to consider their carbon footprints, if you look back to the 2012 riots when we felt we did some of our finest work, it becomes concerning that some of the people who set fire to cars might have created some pollution.'

RSOLES' research into alternatives started last week, as they urge trouble makers to consider the use of equivalent fuels.

'The thing with diesel bombs is as well as being bad for the environment, they're slow to ignite and cause prolonged chaos as people slip on the spilled fuel that never evaporates,' said Barry. 'For those thinking of starting a riot this weekend, as it stands our official recommendation is a magnifying glass and a lot of patience.'

UK travellers to be given advanced new 'coin toss' test for Covid

Holidaymakers returning to the UK are to be given a scientifically advanced 'coin toss' test to decide whether they should go into quarantine for Covid.

This follows the revelation that only one in twenty of the PCR tests that international travellers must take are properly checked using genome sequencing to uncover dangerous Covid variants.

“What this effectively means is that people have been paying an average of £75 each for a bloke in a lab to hold their sample up to the light and say ‘looks all right to me,’” said a spokesman for NHS Test and Trace.

“Our new system is cheaper, quicker and no less random. Upon disembarking, every passenger must queue up, pay £50 and then shuffle past a grumpy Border Force official who spins a coin and says: ‘heads: you’re clear’ or ‘tails: go into quarantine in a hotel and spend £2,000 you can’t afford.’

“It is scientifically proven,” said the spokesman, “because the science says beyond doubt that the coin will always come down on one side or another. It also means the government can keep the profits flowing to their chums in the private sector who wangled contracts to carry out Covid testing.”

It is thought the coin toss test was dreamt up on the spot by prime minister Boris Johnson during a cabinet meeting while ministers were playing ‘spin the bottle’ to decide who would be the next chief executive of the NHS.