“Employees are spending up to 3 minutes per day just pausing for dramatic effect – add this up and you’re talking 15 minutes per week, that’s one hour per month, and 12 hours per year. If you have 1,000 employees, then you’re losing 12,000 hours per year just to people pausing for effect, and project that out across the whole of the UK, and you can see we’re in deep shit.”

Experts have laid the blame at the door of reality shows in which presenters wait at least 2 minutes between the words “and the person eliminated tonight is”, and the loser’s name. Sociologist Anthea Papadololoser said “TV is having a huge effect on the way we speak. From people speaking with an upward inflection due to Neighbours in the 80s and 90s, to people now pausing dramatically in meeting situations, we’re highly susceptible. For the sake of the UK economy, I urge people to just spit it out.”

Industry leaders have called for the dramatic pause to be banned in offices, stating that any mid-sentence silence of more than 5 seconds should be punished with a warning from HR. Sir Hugh Jawaje, CEO of Fockwitz Bank International, sacked two bank clerks last week for making customers wait three minutes before revealing how much was in their bank account:

“We’re very customer driven, you see, and we realise that our customers are time-pressed individuals. Therefore, making them wait – and in this case, telling them that it’s the ‘moment of truth’ and reminding them of their last five transactions before revealing their account balance – is inappropriate. I particularly objected to the bank clerk who went for an ‘advertisement break’ before revealing whether a customer would be eligible for a mortgage or not.”

Three more employees of Fockwitz were suspended without pay last week after intentionally inserting blank powerpoint slides into presentations in order to build up anticipation and tension. One of the employees, who works in the Finance department, deliberately built in slow-fade graphics into his presentation, with one fade lasting a record five minutes.

Oswald Buckshackle, Marketing Director of Touattes UK, however, defended the dramatic pause, claiming that it “improved the customer journey exponentially”, adding “customers are used to reality TV, so by pausing for effect, you’re making them feel special and part of the whole experience. Of course, if any bastard did this during a meeting, then I’d have them fired as it really ticks me off.”

Slimline cat

Is it just me, or do vets not know their arses from their elbows these days? There I was, right, sat on the vet’s examination table – not a happy pussy, I tell you – and he’s banging on about how I’ve got furballs and wotnot. Furballs? Does NOBODY understand me? I’m bulemic, for the love of God. I eat, I puke, I stay slim. How else do you think I’ve got myself into this fine, slimline state? Furballs, indeed.

And what do my stupid owners do? They’re calling me “poor tiddles” and other such nonsense, and asking the vet if there’s anything he can give me. What next? Suppositories? What a joke. So apparently I’m on a prescription that they’re going to hide in my food that will break down the furballs and make them easier to expel. A prescription that I will eat, and oh yes I will eat it – looking happy as Larry – I might purr a bit – rub my face up against their legs to make them think they’ve done right by me, and then I’ll go and puke it up in the back garden.

You see, I’m a slimline cat. I’m not like those fat cats that loll around the back garden barely able to shift their huge girths so that they can catch a bird or a mouse or something. Nup, those fat cats get fed shitloads of sachet food whereas I’m a biscuits kinda guy. Or at least, I was a guy until they chopped my nads off. Now I’m a biscuits kinda eunech-cat. But I’m slimline and I’m staying that way. The girls like me that way, too. Not that I can do anything about it, but hey.

That’s why, whenever I eat something, I make sure that most of it comes right back up. And I’ve been doing it for months – nobody suspected a thing until my stupid owner’s five-year-old stupid child overheard me the other day. There I was, having a good old retch behind the bins, and she runs back in, yelling “Mr Tiddles is being sick! Mr Tiddles is being sick!”

So, naturally, I pegged it. Well what else does a cat do when its owners are coming for it? You run, don’t you. After all, being a slimline cat isn’t all vomiting and bulemia – there’s a lot of exercise involved too. So there I was, hiding out in the neighbours’ garage for a couple of days, and I thought to myself – hey, I can’t go vomming because they might hear me. So I had to hold back on the old bulemia – found myself putting on a few pounds, so I thought – what the heck, let’s have a puke. That’s when they caught me.

Oh, and they were all nice about it, too, stroking my head (God I hate that, you’d think that a wagging tail might be an indicator) and telling me that they’ve missed me. But what happened then? Straight to the man in white for a thermometer up the arse and the rather wild diagnosis that I have furballs.

Furballs, my arse.

Joseph Aboyomi won “Young Scammer of the Year” for his portrayal of the widow of the recently deceased King Moses Odiaka. The judges particularly praised his grit and determination, with a highly targeted Direct Mail campaign that reaped a 0.0001% conversion rate, and a return on investment of £300,000. As the widow of the recently deceased King Moses Odiaka, Aboyomi delighted critics. One said that “it was reminiscent of a young Julia Roberts, full of pathos and guile, a majestic performance,” while another said “Joseph captured that particularly unique combination of grief and neediness.”

“I can’t believe I’ve won Young Scammer of the Year,” beamed a tearful Joseph. “I’d like to thank my parents, who don’t know anything about this, and the good people in the Nigerian government who never do anything about scamming. Without them, none of this would have been possible.”

“Scam of the Year” went to Benny Ewome for his “Granny Sting”, which saw him scam more than twenty silver surfers in the UK within one week. In fact, at one point, Benny even had two grandmothers scamming the others for him, something that took even him by surprise:

“I didn’t think it would pay off,” said Ewome. “But after I’d cleared out their bank accounts, they set about clearing the bank accounts of other grannies. It was almost a pyramid scheme, I guess. Perhaps this will be the model for scamming in the future – who knows? I’ve made myself over half a million with this scam, and it could change the game forever, so yes, I’m pleased with the award. Now I just sit back and watch the money pour in.”

Judge Aiyegbeni Modu said that this year’s scammers were some of the best he’s ever seen, adding: “The quality is very high. Very high indeed. We have seen many great ways of using ebay, gumtree or local classifieds sites, and some brilliant e-mails. One of my favourites was a young man who managed to juggle about fifty different characters. In fact, he was the guy who convinced Billy Crystal to come and host the Scammies, and he’s wiped out his bank account too! A rising star, one might say.”

However, the most emotional moment of the night was reserved for Mrs Mollycoddled, of Norwich, who won “Lifetime Achievement Award” for what the judges call her “unswerving dedication to paying Nigerian scammers for anything and everything”. Mrs Mollycoddled, who is often used by first-time scammers for training purposes, has given up almost every spare penny she has to Nigerian scammers, and was unable to attend the awards ceremony due to not knowing about it. However, scammers have installed a webcam in Mrs Mollycoddled’s living room, and the 5,000-strong audience gave her a tearful, standing ovation as she pottered around making a cup of tea.

Gorilla

As one of the world’s pre-eminent gorillas, I know a thing or two about tag. I remember running around the cage as a youngster, like a mad chimp playing tag with the other chimps, completely unaware of the centuries of tradition that have preceded our innocent game.

You see, this rich heritage of tag runs through the generations. My grandfather played it – his father played it – his father played it and no doubt his father played it too. You get the picture – we’re tag freaks, us gorillas. We love it. We can’t get enough of the game. I just can’t believe that you humans have only just found out that we play it. Christ, I mean, every year in London Zoo, we hold the World Gorilla Tag championships, and you didn’t even notice?

As chimps, we’re taught all about the great Tag champions of the past – from Hairy Bert in the 1700s through to modern day greats such as Banana Barry or Chuckles. The game runs through our veins, man. It’s in our blood.

You loll around in a world of your own, you lot. Here we are, maintaining our long tradition of tag, improving our techniques, honing our skills, and you just sit there thinking – ah, they’re hairy and they eat bananas. Yeah, I’m a hairy gorilla, and I eat bananas (I love ‘em, please send some more), but there’s more to us than that. We play tag loads, but we play other games too – I believe you’ve copied them, too. When we’re really bored, we play a game called “I Spy” – although there’s not much to spy once you’ve been round the cage twenty times already. I Spy something beginning with B – is it banana, or banana? No, you hairless bunch of freaks, it’s “brat” for that horrible little shit of a kid who keeps throwing sweets at us.

As grown-ups, we move away from Tag (don’t have the energy) and play more intellectual games such as Scrabble or Cluedo. My favourite, though, is charades. I love the face on those dumb humans when we’re playing charades. Hahahaha. It’s ace. There I am trying to express “Sleepless in Seattle” through the medium of mime, and you’re all standing there thinking “Aw, they’re gorillas and they’re having fun”.

Some of the more modern gorillas like to play poker, but heck, have you ever played poker with a gorilla? I’ll stick to bridge, thanks, much more civil.

Bear

Hey, I’m a bear, right. I’m covered in hair, I’m a little aggressive, and I like eating honey. Especially from Land Rovers when the windows are down – or not, depending on my mood. I’m also a bit up and down – one minute I’m crazily happy, the next I’m retreating back to my cave feeling like the world’s going to cave in on me at any minute. But I tell you what really gets my goat – really winds me up, man. It’s people who think that because I’m bipolar, I’m actually a polar bear.

I’m not! I love the wild, man. I love the forests and the Rockie Mountains – I love jars of honey, catching fish and sleeping for long, long periods… and I love beating up humans. Them icebergs ain’t for me and you’d never catch me anywhere north of the Arctic circle – them polar bears are crazy, man, I tell you. Mad. And all they ever eat is fish – I mean, I love a bit of sushi – I love it as much as the next bear, but every meal? Not for me – I’m a fan of the Jamie Oliver diet – a bit of vegetation, a bit of meat, a bit of fish – wazz it all up and you’ve got one wicked meal. Wash it all down with some bonzo river water – there’s nothing better. Fish three meals a day, though – what’s all that about?

So it makes me really mad to hear people saying – “hey, he’s a bipolar bear, he’s from the Arctic” or “hey, he’s a bipolar bear, maybe he’s got his winter coat on?” What a load of cock! The other day, someone said, “hey, if he’s a bipolar bear, does that mean he likes both male and female polar bears?”

Heck man, no it does not! Let’s get one thing straight here – I may have moodswings that go up and down more often than a whore’s knickers on a particularly busy night, but I’m a ladies’ bear, pure and simple. In fact, I’d rather be called a polar bear than a bi-bear – there’s such a thing as pride, you know! What with all of these “teddy bears” that you humans are so fond of, us bears have got a reputation to repair. Only the other day, I broke into a family vehicle and found this book called “Rupert the Bear” – who the bloody hell ever thought of calling a bear Rupert? That’s a totally gay bear.

No, bears are called “Brutus” or “Kong”, not “Rupert” or “Tarquin” or whatever monstrosities you humans are calling us now. And hey, I can talk on behalf of the polar bears now, we don’t want to be part of your “save the planet” bullcrap. Yeah, we’ve all seen those pictures of polar bears on little icebergs about to drown because you lot are ruining the planet with your SUVs and your 4×4s. Leave us out of it, man!

So remember, if you come across me in the forest one day, I’m neither bi nor polar – I’m bipolar, so you’d better pray I’m in one of my good moods!

“Fox hunting used to be great fun,” said Tabatha Nezbrun-Fesse, 3rd heir to the Duchy of Botox-on-the-Wold. “But all of a sudden, we got these ‘people’ signing up who were previously against fox hunting. You know, those oiks who used to turn up with their placards and wotnot. Thing is, they’re all frothing at the mouth and all gung-ho.”

“I saw one man tear a fox apart with his own teeth,” she continued. “And a group of women actually wanted to burn the fox alive in a sort of ritual. When you think about it, chasing a fox with hounds is actually quite humane when you compare it to how the Daily Mail readers treat them. Those poor foxes, they don’t know what’s coming, do they.”

Approximately 5000 people joined the Daily Mail’s campaign to “wipe foxes from the very face of this great country”, and vigilante groups have been seen in towns and cities scouring the streets for “the fox menace”. However, many have turned to countryside fox hunts as a way of venting their anger against the red threat.

“I hate them foxes,” seethed Dave Camionblanc from Billericay. “All of them. They’re worse than immigrants. If I see one, I’m going to tear its bloody limbs off, I tell you. That’s why I joined the East Sussex Fox Hunt Brigade. So basically, me and the lads, Quentin, Tarquin and Lord Farquah, we get on our horses – well, I have to borrow one – and we blow these horns. Actually, I don’t have a horn, so I just have to shout ‘die you bastard foxes die’ and we charge off into the fields to go killing foxes.”

“It’s the best,” he beamed. “The lads had to hold me back the other day. I found one and gave it a proper kicking.”

Fox groups have spoken out against the rising tide of Daily Mail-inspired vengeance against them. A Mr Brush from London told the Daily Shame that “in the old days, being torn apart by dogs was seen as the worst thing that could happen to a fox. But nowadays, it’s the people we’re scared of. Once upon a time, I used to regale people with jokes and laughter. Nowadays, I’ve got skinheads and women with three teeth and tattoos throwing eggs at me and chasing me down the road with a meat cleaver. I think even the dogs are feeling sorry for us.”

• a cold
• the flu
• sniffles
• headaches
• or a sore throat

Dave from Billericay came to us with a mild headache and a sore throat. None of this was his fault, and he deserved compensation. So we successfully sued everyone in the Billericay area who had a cold within the three weeks preceding Dave’s cold.

“Without ColdLawyers4U.biz, I would have been miserable. Now, I’ve got the compensation I deserve, I’ve got someone to blame, and their no-win, no-fee policy made me feel safe that I could get what I was entitled to with absolutely no effort whatsoever no my part.”

Susan from Aldershot came to us with hay fever. This was not her fault, and she deserved compensation for the summers that she had spent indoors hiding from the pollen. So, we sued Alan Titchmarsh and the ginger woman who doesn’t wear a bra.

“ColdLawyers4u.biz helped me through a difficult period. Knowing that Alan Titchmarsh and the ginger tart were to blame really did put me at ease.”

“It really brightens up my day,” says 60-year-old grandmother Maureen D’Enbie. “I sit in front of my telly waiting for the Vanilla Ice bit – you know – where they cleverly talk about ISAs and the co-presenter realises that ISA can be synched into Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”, making it “ISA ISA Baby”. That’s just brilliant. Genius, if you will. I don’t know how they come up with things like that. It really does make you think that despite the horribly low rate of interest that you get on an ISA from Halifax, and the ridiculous low return you’d get on it, you’re doing it for the enjoyment of the advert. I do hope they keep Halifax Radio on the air.”

13-year-old pupil Aasphyxxiaaa Jones says that she loves the “high five” moments, saying “radio should be more like that all the time. All of the hosts should have these big high five hands and they should tell everyone all the time about how they’re giving everyone £5 in their accounts, even though that £5 is probably less than the interest most of them would have been earning, and many of them are already paying £12.50 to Halifax for their accounts anyway, so the £5 doesn’t matter, it just makes it £7.50 each month, but they should definitely keep up the ‘High Five’ thing because that’s just brilliant.”

“My mum loves Spandau Ballet. Each time it’s on, she gets up and dances. It’s ace. And she really loves the fact that not a single person in the advert knows how to act. It’s like they’re really bankers!”

Despite calls for every single person in the advert to be beaten to a pulp using a baseball bat studded with nails dipped in arsenic, then packed into a potato sack, set on fire and thrown off London Bridge, and equally for the ad agency who came up with the idea to be carpet-bombed, letters have been flooding in to the Halifax bank asking for autographs from the radio stars. Even Howard, who was dumped by the bank during the credit crunch, says that he has been “completely outdone”, adding:

“I thought my singing advert was brilliant, but this really does trump it! I mean, foam hands for high fives? That’s genius! What a great way of convincing people that £5 in their bank accounts when you’re not actually giving them any interest on your current accounts, and charging them £30 for going overdrawn by a penny. I mean, it’s brilliant. And the ISA ISA baby bit? Absolutely fantastic. I really hope they don’t close down Halifax Radio – and maybe one day I’ll come back and present, now wouldn’t that be just brilliant?”

Howard, now age 39, is currently unemployed and lives with his mother in a studio flat in Peckham.

Contestant Sunita really cocked it all up by discovering half-way through that she had hay fever, and started sneezing buckets over her flowers. She was instantly dismissed by the Iron Flower Arranger, and broke down into tears, claiming that this competition “meant the world to her.” However, Barry from Canvey Island really got the hang of it, whipping up a glorious display of blues, reds and yellows that had the judges gushing.

“Packed full of perfumes,” roared Claire Balding, and that appears to be her catchphrase for the series. Alan Titchmarsh, however, looks a little out of place. A bit like a pervy old uncle at an Ultimate Wrestling competition.

Panorama’s expose of David Cameron’s Big Society was shocking. Claiming a gaping hole in the Conservative manifesto, Panorama alleged Cameron of merely planning to put the word “society” in big letters on top of the white cliffs of Dover. While Cameron blustered and wheezed his way through a thousand excuses, the host – Peter Kay – unveiled documents that proved Cameron had indeed ordered six of the seven letters, and was waiting on “Y” from his suppliers.

The BBC’s brilliant follow-up to Ashes to Ashes, Come into the Garden, Maud, goes from strength to strength. Phillip Glenister is brilliant as Gene Hunt’s own great grandfather who encounters a modern-day cop who has landed in the 1920s, as if by time-travel magic.

Unfortunately, there are no women in the police force, but he still manages to get in the odd sexist dig every now and again. For example, in last night’s episode, he berated a prostitute for looking like “some kind of Charleston gone badly wrong”. Hilarious!

“I feel used,” he moaned. “It made me feel that bit more special, leaving the office and getting a hello from the office cleaner. In fact, I make it a point always to respond and be friendly to the office cleaner. I’ve always said that if there’s a revolution, these people will be in charge, and you’d better be on their side. However, when I discovered that I wasn’t the only one to receive a hello on my way out, I felt sick to my stomach.”

Sutcliffe discovered the greeting-cheating when leaving the office early for the first time since 2007. Hiding behind his door, he noticed the cleaner saying hello to at least three other colleagues, before turning his attention back to his work. Indeed, with one of the colleagues, the cleaner appeared to have an extended conversation involving plans for the evening, and a jokey “see you tomorrow” / “not if I see you first” back-and-forth repartee. The colleague then made a ‘thumbs-up’ sign to the cleaner, who reciprocated, evidently the sign of an internal joke to which Sutcliffe was not party.

He then went back to his cleaning with an obvious smile on his face, clearly reminiscing over the banter which preceded.

“I thought he was going to slap him on the back at one point,” said Sutcliffe. “There I was feeling all special about my hello every evening, feeling that I was the one who had the repartee, the friendship, the relationship with this cleaner, whose name I forget. And all the time, he was greeting colleagues as well.”

Sutcliffe left the office in a rage, punching cars as he walked through the car park, and sat hitting his steering wheel for five full minutes before driving off at high speed.

Sutcliffe is thought to have entered therapy to overcome his greeting-cheating issue, but cleaner Theobald Salopard claims that Sutcliffe is indeed “the most special person in the office” for him. He told us, in a no-way scripted manner, that “Mr Sutcliffe is the person I wait to say hello to and his hello is the most special moment of my day. However, I will not be restricted to one office worker. I’m a gregarious man, and I love my job. Part of that job is saying hello or goodbye to people as they leave their place of work. Mr Sutcliffe has to realise that.”