‘They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our Dress Circle tickets to see Phantom'

With the threatened delay of the UK’s ‘Freedom Day’ from Lockdown, many citizens have taken to the streets to demand cheap package holidays, karaoke and universal suffrage – only kidding with that last one, they just want half-price cocktails. Said one agitator: ‘Nobody wants basic human rights, but we do want West End theatre tickets?’

Strangely, as a nation, we now equate freedom with the chance to see ‘Cats’ on stage, ideally discounted, with a restricted view. While Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom took 27 years, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s took 30 seconds, from the stroll from his Rolls Royce to the stage door.

As Julian Assange sits in his prison cell, he must consider himself lucky, compared to those oppressed citizens who now have to wear a face mask in Aldi. In the last decade we have happily surrendered civil liberties and freedom of expression, but as the NRA says: ‘I'll only use sanitizer when you put it on my cold, dead hands’.

Said one concerned citizen: ‘It’s delay after delay, we also had a Freedom Day for leaving the EU but that was delayed by several decades. I don’t mind waiting a few years to hug my family, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss out on front row seats to see ‘Dear Evan Hansen’.’

Omega variant will make everyone incredibly sexy and give some people superpowers

Professor Chris Whitty has a slide he hasn't shown yet. It will be the last slide he ever shows. Shocking and surprising the press and everyone watching on TV at home, up will pop a nude photo of Linda Lusardi from 1983. Chris will panic and fumble and say, "My word... I don't know how that got in there."

But then he will turn and glare straight down the lens with a wry smile and the look of a man who really knows what's going on.

With the words, "No, stay on the same slide, please," a flashy animation will fade out Linda to reveal charts and graphs like we've never seen before. The data will show that the 'Omega' variant has mutated into a virus which spreads extraordinary symptoms.

Chris will explain that the Omega variant is the most transmissible one yet, but that it will turn anyone who contracts the virus in to the sexiest form their bodies have ever taken. Everyone will be "Well fit," and, "Ripped like a Bondi lifeguard." Everything will be toned and pert and eventually the entire population will be young-looking and achingly desirable.

But that's not all...

Some will develop superpowers like being able to get the lids off jars without straining every sinew. Many will be able to piddle straight standing up and hit the target every time. Some will be able to remember their passport numbers off by heart.

Best of all, though, everyone will develop X-ray vision and be able to see through anything. Especially fake news and reports from suspect media outlets.

Big business pens open letter to Johnson over 'Freedom Day' postponement

A group of super rich businessmen and women has written an open letter to Boris Johnson, expressing fury at yesterday's climbdown, in not granting England its long-awaited 'Freedom Day'.

One magnate said: 'Is this the bulldog spirit? Can we allow what is clearly the greatest country in the world to be held to ransom by some sneaky underhand nasty foreign bug?'

'And don't talk to me about suffering. I have personally lost millions of pounds worth of value from my companies, leaving me with only a few billion in the bank. How am I to make ends meet? I'm facing ruin here.'

While another complained. 'It might seem like our group is motivated purely by colossal greed for monstrously massive self gains. It could perhaps appear that we're quite happy to play Russian Roulette with the lives of our workforces.'

'Well, perish the thought. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can certainly trust me on that score too. What's more, I am thinking very seriously of implementing the minimum wage across all my business, as well as abolishing zero hours contracts too.'

Meanwhile the former 'Quiet Man' of politics, Iain Duncan Smith, is said to be enraged by the PM's capitulation in the face of the overwhelming medical advice and evidence. An insider said that IDS was "going to jolly well do something about it" assuming he can find anyone of importance, influence or clout prepared to listen to him.