Is it a cold, superflu, or Covid?

Covid, flu and colds share many of the same symptoms, so telling them apart can be difficult. Here is our handy guide to what you’ve got:

• You need a day off for Christmas shopping – it’s a cold

• You need a week off for a break in the sun – it’s flu (unless you’ve already used that excuse, in which case it’s Covid)

• You need to get out of drinks with the awful people up the street – it’s a cold (although if you tell them it’s herpes, then you might get out of next year's event as well)

• You are Lando Norris – it’s all three, but you won the F1 championship anyway

• You are the PM – it’s Covid, and it’s all the fault of the previous Tory government

• You are Rachel Reeves – it’s none of these trivial illnesses. It’s probably the Black Death or psittacosis

• You are Michael Jackson – it’s monkeypox

• You are waiting in A&E – it’s all three, plus a bonus Hospital Acquired Infection

• You are an England cricketer – it’s none of the above, unfortunately. Maybe do some more practice?

Image credit: deep dream generator

AI writed this headline: The future is now

It has been announced that the Isle of Wight’s best-selling free weekly ‘newspaper’ the Ventnor Harvester (not to be confused with the popular eatery) will be the first newspaper to be totally generated by AI with no human intervention whatsoever.

Proprietor Muppet Murdoch said, ‘We are proud to be world leaders to take news publishing into the sunlit uplands of an exciting tomorrow. Our innovative and exciting AI news-gathering will anonymise from where we plagiarised – oops, I meant creatively and lovingly duplicated – all of our exciting material. Here is an example of an item from this week’s exciting issue:-

‘In an exciting, sensational development today, some political bloke slagged off another political bloke, and accused him of being an anarchist / Reform fascist / Tory scum / Labour scum / Liberal scum / vegetarian / train spotter / Johnny Foreigner. The other political bloke hit back, accusing the first political bloke of being a sheep shagger and or Welsh / priest or bishop / former Post Office Chief Executive / Newsbiscuit contributor. Another political bloke standing outside his party’s stunning / iconic / exciting HQ slammed the first two, insisting that they were totally out of touch with the popular zeitgeist and that only his party could bring the county together and make the Isle of Wight Great Again (stylish baseball caps available in the Harvesters online store.)’

Mr Murdoch continued, ‘I had made the decision to bring the Harvester bang up to date. I found out that our neighbour’s son is doing GCSE Computing. His first project investigating Jaguar Land Rover’s IT systems didn’t go quite according to plan, so he was happy to have a stab at AI. People have been claiming that some rag called Newsbiscuit has been using AI for years – and when you look at the bad grammar, stilted prose and total lack of anything remotely funny this is probably right.’

When asked what the initials AI stood for, Mr Murdoch confidently responded 'Artificial Insemination'.

Image credit: perchance.org

'Lucky' England drawn in same World Cup group as the Village People

England manager Thomas Tuchel has rebuffed claims that his side is lucky after being drawn in the same 2026 World Cup group as American 70s disco outfit Village People.

The band brought Friday’s World Cup draw to a close performing their smash hit ‘YMCA’ moments after unexpectedly been drawn to face England in group L next summer. The group is completed by the South-West Region Lidl works team, and the winner of the play-off between Easter Island and the Harlem Globetrotters.

‘There are no easy games in the World Cup’ says Tuchel. ‘Village People may be past their best, but they have a very good youth system, and are always encouraging young players to come along and hang out with all the boys.

‘And, of course, the Lidl works team won the South-West Region League by 4 points. As long as they can keep their star striker ‘Fat Morph’ fit, by which I mean sober, then they could be dangerous. After all, Lidl are a German company, and you know the old saying in football – ‘never write off the Germans, or their discount supermarkets’.'

Meanwhile, Scotland have been drawn in the same group as Brazil, and will face the 5-time winners 3 times over 10 days, with only the group winners going through to the knock-out stages.

‘It's a tough draw’ says Scotland manager Steve Clarke. ‘We had been expecting to be drawn in a group with 3 other teams, but to be in a group with just Brazil, and to have to play them 3 times in 10 days in the soaring heat, is going to be difficult.

‘Before the draw we had hoped we might sneak into the last 32 by being one of the best placed 3rd placed teams, but as there are only 2 teams in the group, that’s going to be quite tricky’.

‘Still stranger things have happened in international football, like Donald Trump being awarded a peace prize by FIFA. What’s next? Is Benjamin Netanyahu going to be presented with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry before the draw for the fourth round of the Carabao Cup?’

Image credit: perchance.org