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It’s hot, which is weather and not news. Unless you want to put bikini-clad women on the front page of your newspaper, shout ‘Phwoar what a scorcher’ and desperately avoid talking about climate change. Calling a newspaper 'The Sun' seems especially uncool right now. The heat is forcing some Brits to scavenge the deepest, darkest recesses of their wardrobes for suitable clothes.


Shelley Stevenson found some faded red shorts not worn since a girls holiday to Zante. ‘If these shorts could talk, they would probably talk about a Greek holiday rep called Stefanos. I wouldn’t be pulling out of his European Court of Human Rights if you know what I mean. He triggered my Article 69. He really stamped my passport. Nowadays if I'm having joyless perfunctory sex with my husband, I pretend that he is Stefanos. I've got kids, skyrocketing bills and an ouzo habit. I work in insurance. Oh god.' sobbed Stevenson, breaking down.


Gary Grimthwaite could only find a t-shirt from a colleague's stag do to wear to a family barbecue. ‘We were forced to wear matching t-shirts with stupid nicknames. My nickname is Gaz so why does my t-shirt say Slagmuncher in massive neon letters? I work in insurance! I could add umlauts and pretend Slägmüncher are a band maybe? I heard that couple are getting divorced now. She's gone off to Greece to hook up with an old flame - good for her.'


‘It is hot though, isn’t it.’




First published 18 Jul 2022

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Officials are in despair and believe that a US-UK trade deal cannot now be saved.


Negotiations had been progressing, but had become increasingly difficult.


UK negotiators have explained that local food standards, while fairly lax, did not allow food companies to kill their customers quickly, although ill effects were allowed to accumulate over many years. They cited beer, tuna laced with mercury, and greasy food as examples.


The US negotiators accused the Brits of being very namby-pamby and nanny state about over the counter drugs. They championed the American system in which you can buy all the drugs you can afford in any pharmacy, and in which antibiotic resistance is just god’s way of telling you to invent new and even more expensive drugs.


These issues, and many others, had been chewed over and compromises found.  However, at the eleventh hour, the US side had demanded - as part of the deal - presidential access to former page 3 girl Sam Fox. The president seems to have developed an unhealthy attachment to Sam Fox after seeing copies of The Sun on visits to Scotland.   He subsequently acquired a full set of back issues and keeps his favourite pictures in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.


British negotiators fear that the Sam Fox issue is a deal breaker and a condition on which they cannot deliver.


A spokesman said, 'The US side clearly expects Sam Fox to look exactly the same as she did 40 years ago. But us Brits have never had the same enthusiasm as the Yanks for cosmetic surgery. Even if we could provide presidential access to a naturally aged Sam Fox, we are worried that the President might feel that he'd been fobbed off. And no-one, not even Samantha Fox, wants to fob off a US President.


Picture credit: Wix AI




Magistrates in Hounslow have fined a man one hundred pounds and bound him over to keep the peace, after he was convicted of having trained his dog, a two-year-old German Shepherd called Rex, to "lurk nearby the newspaper display in Tesco and bite anyone on the arse who picked up a copy of the Daily Mail".


Simon Rothery a sous chef told reporters: 'I had had just about enough of watching a succession of smug blue-rinse old bats and Captain Mainwaring total fuckwits walking into the shop, reading the Mail's front page, turning puce, tutting loudly then picking up and buying it without even the slightest hint of embarrassment or shame. Not even one of them asked to have it hidden inside a brown paper bag.'


'What's more I have no intention whatsoever of complying with my sentence. Rex will continue to bite these reactionary bigots with impunity as far as I am concerned. They and their ilk are the reason the Brexit vote won in the EU referendum. I just don't know why they can't take a proper balanced paper like The Express or Sun.'


Photo by Anna Dudkova on Unsplash

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