Shock for Big Brother fans as Deportation of Terminally Ill Ghanaian Women Fails to Bring Dad Back to Life

(Before the horror: fans celebrate a stranger’s pain.)

Fans of TV gameshows Big Brother and The Weakest Link expressed dismay on message boards today after it emerged that the deportation of a terminally ill Ghanaian woman has done nothing for their own poorly relatives.

“It’s absolutely disgusting!” Maxine Wartooth, South Cave, protested. “When they pulled the plug on my poor old Dad, I knew for certain it was foreign people to blame. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Bloody disgusting!” echoed Wendy Hell, Barking. “The suffering of this lady from abroad must have increased tenfold, and yet my hips feel no better. What’s going on?”

Rob and Charity Merryweather, Redditch, were equally bemused: “When we heard that a foreign national was to be denied treatment, we were over the moon and became visibly less irate. But now, two days on and the cruelty still hasn’t translated into practical improvement for ourselves. It’s a shame we have no conception of solidarity. In fact, our blood pressure is now slightly higher than it was before, perhaps because we fear what the rest of the world will do to us if we are ever at its mercy.”

The gameshows, which are all framed as zero-sum games, are a popular form of entertainment in the UK.

“Not Exceptional”: Minister Defends Disembowelment

The snap decision to disembowel a woman in Cardiff was defended by Mutilations Minister Emily Avery today.

Avery, head of the powerful Ministry of Mutilations and Harm, told MPs that her decision to disembowel the mother of three in Tescos carpark, Cardiff, was impromptu but “not exceptional”.

Responding to bypassers who accused her of atrocious barbarism, and to judges who called the disembowelment arguably disgusting, she said, “These are incredibly difficult mutilations. I disembowel hundreds of people each year for insults ranging from their place-of-birth to having fallen on hard times. It is one of the things that makes being a government minister with diplomatic immunity and earnings five orders of magnitude above the minimum wage such an incredibly tough job. The decision to gut this lady was literally heartrending but not exceptional. I saw her trip on a kerb and instinct took over; I just moved in for the kill.”

The disembowelment comes in a week that has seen the wealthy minister burn off the thumbs of a nun and squirt a lost boy’s face with vitriol.

Judges say there is little they can do to stop Ms. Avery once she is on a spree.

Hain Denies Knowledge of “Magical” Kingdom

(Hain at work on constituents’ behalf in his realm of wonders.)

Work-and-Pensions Secretary and Wales Czar Peter Hain has protested his ignorance of undeclared donations to the campaign fund of his deputy Labour leadership bid last year, including a “magical” kingdom worth in excess of £1 x 10^9 billion pounds.

The infinity-hectares realm, which boasts a wide spectrum of human and mythical denizens together with an undisclosed amount of buried treasure, is believed to intersect with our universe via a portal in Mr. Hain’s loft.

The Czar, who describes himself as “a pretty straight bloke”, continues to resist calls for his resignation, insisting that any imperia received were due to “administrative failings” and certainly not deliberately annexed by his fire-snorting wyvern shock-troops from impoverished peasants.

“It’s not even a very good kingdom (if it exists),” Hain said in his defence. “Although it comes with fabulous powers, allegedly, these can only be activated by a crystal. But the crystal was smashed into 50 shards by a wicked mage and scattered through the 50 zones of my world. Or so they say. Frankly I have no knowledge of any of this.”

Shadow Prime Minister David Campbell agreed that this was a possibility: “There but for the grace of...” he chortled with a roguish twinkle, discretely brushing crystal-dust from his kabbalistic robes.

“And,” added Hain, “while it’s true I do seem to have an army of zombie slave-fauns at my bidding, a mithril chariot and 200 hobbit concubines, there’s nothing too illegal about that, and besides I just don’t know about it. I am equally unsure as to whether the hobbits’ eyes have been replaced with diamonds, each weighing 120 metric carats and scintillating at soirées with a delightful iridescence. I have simply never looked that closely.”

“Could be, could be,” murmured the Campbell between mantras, an enigmatic half-smile playing across his lips.

Police investigating the world say their work is being “totally hampered” by spells and bad curses.

Church to Allow Gnome and Angel Marriages

The Church of England is to allow marriages to gnomes and angels, but still not between same-sex couples. According to today’s press-release, the move will bring church-marriage kicking and screaming into the 11th century.

Said Archbishop Sir Alasdair Hube, “Hark! I personally have no quarrel with the queerfolk. Aye, truly! As a Christian, I long to tolerate them. Sadly though, as a church, we must abide by the prejudices of old men in the Middle East thousands of years ago. Yet, lo! That’s not to say we can’t bring the institution of marriage bang up to date.”

However, young people are finding the traditional church wedding, with its arcane procedures, ever more outmoded. In church law, couples are required to seek the services of an imprisoned clergyman, whose pariah status permits him to sanctify the act of “Devil’s love” (sex between real people). They must then burn the ghosts of their child-selves at a ceremony known as “the Banns of Golgotha” and smear their loins with the ashes, after which they are allowed to kiss the loins of a dead man’s statue, livid with the marks of torture.

But in the age of computer games, drugs, easy access to Buddhism and science lectures on Google Video, even this is not enough to “get them in the mood”.

Under the current proposals, couples will be allowed to kiss any part of the dead man’s statue, and only have to make a small symbolic cross on their loins to remind them of Christ. The rest of the ceremony is up to them.

“We are quietly confident,” said Hube. “If successful, the scheme could be extended to pixies, succubuses and hob-houlards by as early as the first half of the next century.”

Dream Jobs for Coma Patients

Conservative leader Gordon Cameron today unveiled his party’s plan to get one million coma patients back into work in their dreams.

“Coma patients have it all: round the clock care, severe head injuries... No one is saying there aren’t deserving cases out there. But we have a hundred people under the age of 30 in comas in this country, many of them from deprived backgrounds. Do we really believe that they are too unconscious to work?”

Shadow Employment Secretary Jasper Basculant Devises-Dives added, “If you’re well enough to spend weeks struggling through infinite wastelands of stillness and ice, pinned under mountains, just missing school buses, glimpsing lost loves but being unable to call out to them, or screaming in impotent silent terror as you watch your friends die over and over again in the fiery conflagration that led to your condition, then surely you’re capable of holding down a proper job such as being a Shadow Employment Secretary – or, in your case, picking up shit in a dream park.”

The plan has drawn strong criticism from kinsfolk and right-thinking people. “But that’s all stuff,” Mr. Cameron counters, “as we have not heard a single objection from the patients themselves.”

It is estimated that the scheme will cost the British taxpayer not many times more than the price of not implementing it.

Cats Retract Festive Greetings

Four million cats in England and Wales alleged today that greetings given in their name over the Christmas period were delivered under false pretences.

“I have a card here wishing season’s cheer to Meghan, Mat and kids (Shawn, Sean and Siân),” spat spokespuss Charlie “The Cat” Nevinson, his whiskers trembling with indignation. “Well, I think I may have met Meghan and Mat once on a flying visit five years ago, but I don’t know that I could pick them out from a crowd. I’ve never even heard of those other people. I feel nothing for them.”

“This is forgery on an unprecedented scale,” hissed ginger tom Felix Johnson. “I am supposed to have wished lots of joy to David and Sarah Barnes and every success for the coming year. Who the hairball are they? There’s love and kisses and everything. Yuck.”

Nibbles Granger, a portly tortoiseshell agreed: “Naturally I feel affection for my folks. They feed and pet me. But now they’ve forged my mark. Where is trust? What’s it to me whether Billy gets well soon? My brain simply hasn’t evolved to experience empathy on that scale.”

Millions of biro paw-prints are now with the crown prosecution service awaiting review. If DNA tests prove them fake, the Christmas industry could end up paying up to a trillion billion cat-euros (about £12 pounds) in compensation.

Master Races to Spawn on NHS

Couples in England and Wales seeking to spawn a transhuman or superhuman Master Race will be given fertility treatment on the NHS starting this tax year.

The offer includes access to secret underground laboratories and recombinant DNA splicers thought to cost the tax payer up to a billion euros and a good night’s sleep. Some parents will also have the run of a Balkan château, a dozen free corpses and a nine months’ supply of fork lightning.

“The grant is good in two ways,” explained Science Minister Kenneth Smiley. “One: it’s a change. (In our manifesto we promised change.) Two: it will mean more choice for parents.”

“We’re over the moon!” said scientific parents Marianne and Pauline Rend. “The blueprints of our ten-armed, laser-breathing bundles of solid muscle look soooo cute. We can’t wait to produce them in a vat.”

But the decision is not without its controversy. Critics fear that it could lead to “designer babies”.

“Do we really want a world where parents can chose the eye colour of their unborn offspring?” queried critic Len Happenstrobe.

Currently parents can only chose superficial details about their unborn offspring, such as whether they live or die.