“Looking back on it now,” Woebetide-Smith confides, “it’s quite funny. I mean, there I was, reading Tony Blair’s book backwards for a bit of a laugh, and all of a sudden, the room heats up as if someone’s just turned up the thermostat. Well, blow me, I thought, I shouldn’t have worn this extra t-shirt underneath. Anyway, before I knew it, there was this puff of smoke, a huge roar of cackling laughter, flames everywhere, and this fella with a red face standing in front of me.”

Shocked friends recoiled in horror as Satan demanded to know why he had been invoked, pointing at his watch and saying “I’m a busy man”. Close friend Alexander Connard said that it was his first – and hopefully last – brush with Beelzebub:

“It started off as a bit of a laugh – you know, Alabaster reading out Tony Blair’s book backwards – who’d have thought it would sound so… well, so spiteful, so malicious? And who’d have thought that Tony Blair had used the very words you require to invoke the devil himself! Even Satan seemed surprised.”

Sources close to the Dark Lord say that there are “many ways” in which the Devil can be invoked, and that it is becoming harder and harder to monitor satanic invocation codes. Head of Satanic Intervention, Marco Bastardo, said that “Tony Blair’s autobiography is littered with invocation codes.” He continued, “we’ve even found a way of reading A Journey that opens up a trapdoor to the underworld itself. This may, at first glance, appear a quite harmless book full of slang, cliches, the word ‘like’ and ‘you know’, but Mr Blair is obviously clearing a path for favourable treatment when he ends up in Hell. That can never be guaranteed, as you know.”

Satan was reportedly “miffed” at being invoked, and told reporters: “I was just settling down for a night in front of the telly – X Factor is on and I just love that Cowell fella. I’d just made myself a cup of tea – boiling hot, three sugars, and I’m whisked off to this poncey cottage in Norfolk or somewhere like that. Some bloke is there reading invocation code 392.6a looking shit scared, so I ask him what the heckfire he wants. He has no idea – they never do, you know. It was the same last week when some idiot teenagers played this James Blunt record backwards, and I had to spend 5 minutes with them explaining the seriousness of the situation. I’m a busy man, for Christ’s sake.”

“Anyway, that said, I had a lovely evening in Shytte-on-Sea. Thought I’d make an evening of it, so I went off and had a fish supper.”

“The Koran is dang hard to burn,” said Jones at his Florida ranch yesterday. “I mean, this is one heck of a heavy book. It’s hard-back, it has stitching, and a special kind of paper that I ain’t never seen before. You’re going to need some pretty dang good incendiary experience here, and I ain’t got that. I only discovered fire two weeks ago when I went out into the woods and rubbed a couple of sticks together. I said to myself then and I say to myself now, I ain’t never seen anythin’ like it, so I said – hey man, I could use this to destroy that Muslim book, the Ko-whatsit.”

Jones returned from the forest and started small, burning pages from the phone directory one by one. However, it was his admission that he had burned a copy of OK! magazine that has riled the British public.

“It’s not just any copy of OK! magazine”, ranted regular OK! reader Sharleennee Spitrash, from Essex. “It was the one wiv Jordan and Peter Andre on the front cover about how they is maybe gettin’ back together or something, and they had a well good special on how some celebs have too much cellulite or something. This Florida guy is deliberately taunting us. Apparently he burned each page individually, starting with the story about Cheryl Cole getting out of a car and flashing her knickers, and finishing with the one about Gok Wan’s ‘man bangers’.”

“This stuff is too important to burn,” she spat. “He has no idea how important it is to us.”

Hundreds have joined in marches to protest against the burning of OK! magazine, with one demonstration in Blackburn getting out of hand when an effigy of Terry Jones was set alight and trampled upon by Burberry-clad OK! readers brandishing “the holy magazine”, and holding aloft banners that read “Kill da paster OK!”

Jones himself though is unrepentant: “These people have to realise that the ultimate aim is the burning of this Muslim book, the Ko-thingummyjig. So if a few magazines get burned along the way, we have to look at the big picture. Only yesterday I angered three elderly people by burning Reader’s Digest – but these are hard times, and we have to endure. Magazines and books will get burned along the path to religious righteousness.”

“I’m all man,” said Hague. “And 100% at ease with my sexuality. I like a pint, and I also like the YMCA. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fun to stay at the YMCA – you can get yourself cleaned, you can have a good meal, in fact, you can do whatever you feel. However, as a straight, woman-chasing, beer-swilling alpha male, it perhaps gave people the wrong impression.”

“I’d like to apologise to all my constituents – I have no need to feel down, I should pick myself up off the ground and remind myself there’s no need to feel unhappy.”

Hague’s team immediately organised some “manly” things for Hague to do, including participating in the annual “Yorkshire Puffter Hunt”, a traditional part of the calendar in Yorkshire, in which gay men are released onto the moors, and given a ten-minute head start before Geoffrey Boycott leads a pack of “real men” to hunt them down. This year’s event was notable for the inclusion of some non-Yorkshire gays for the first time, on the insistence of Mr Hague who wanted the Hunt to be more open to all races and religions.

Onlookers said that Hague was “perhaps getting into it too much”.

Julian, who runs the YMCA in Harrogate, said that he was delighted Mr Hague found the time to visit, adding “Mr Hague booked himself into a single bed and acted entirely properly and with dignity. He was in town for a Take That concert with his friend Gok Wan, and needed a place to stay.”

“He laughed out loud when he booked and reminded us all that he was 100% hetero and straight – which is cool with us – and said he might upgrade to a double if he bags himself a hot chick.”

“He didn’t.”

Dear Readers,

A few months ago, we posted an article which boldly claimed that Nick Clegg eats babies. In the article, we detailed at length how the Liberal Democrat leader and now Deputy Prime Minister would stalk the streets of Sheffield slavering at the chops in search of newborn blood.

We now realise that we were correct, and would like to apologise. The Daily Shame strives to make every effort to report lies, falsehood and exaggeration to satiate our readers’ lust for something other than the truth, and we regret that this aberration may tarnish our reputation for not telling the truth. We apologise wholeheartedly for any disappointment that our article back in April may have caused.

You see, we thought it would be funny. We thought it would be amusing to poke fun at the establishment’s scoriating tirade on a young man who speaks dangerous foreign languages and risked turning the General Election into something other than a Tory victory. We believed that by exaggerating the voracity of the establishment’s campaign against the Liberal Democrat leader, we would potentially amuse a few people. We had no idea that the accusations were true.

Nick Clegg does indeed eat babies, and he does indeed take part in Satanic rituals in which he worships the Lord Beelzebub. We also reported that he burns virgins on Hampstead Heath every Saturday night, and this is also unfortunately true. He also believes that British people should be thrown out of their own country and replaced with paedophile immigrant Muslims in burqas and Polish benefits claimants. We reported this believing it to be untrue, and we are shocked to discover that this is what he plans to unleash on the country.

Worst of all, however, we revealed that he ridiculously believed the war in Iraq to be illegal. What a nonce.

We have launched an internal investigation into these truthful reports, and can assure our loyal readers that in future, all sources will be rigorously checked for lack of facts, inaccuracy and shortage of detail. We have created a number of processes through which we will ensure that no truth whatsoever shall be reported on these pages, and once more, we are truly, very, deeply, horribly sorry.

Yours,

The Daily Shame

“I’ve been a fool,” he said, reading from a prepared statement at a press conference. “I’ve been a damn fool and I’ve let everyone down. Not only was I completely and utterly sober, I was actually drinking carrot and wheatgrass juice until 10 in the morning with my wife. There is no excuse for my actions, and I apologise wholeheartedly. I now have to face my children, who know that I was sober at work, and I do not know how I can live with that shame. I now return to my constituency whereupon I shall endeavour to continue my work as a drunk.”

There are suggestions that von Rochester has been coerced by the party into turning his sobriety problem into a public consultation. Von Rochester himself added: “In fact, I shall be asking my constituents which drinks they want me to get drunk on, as part of our new openness thing.”

Fellow MPs have lambasted Von Rochester for his appalling sobriety. Liam Fox slurred: “He’s a f-cking disgrace. I tell you what, I’m challenging him to a fight – a fight, yes that’s right, a fight. Me and him, mano a mano, outside on the lawn outside Westminster. Come on Von Rochie or whatever your name is – think you can be a Tory MP without being off your bloody head? Bastard.”

Theresa May swigged back her eighteenth gin and tonic before launching into a tirade, saying “it’s people like him that make it just Britain – not Great Britain – not Amazing F-cking Britain, just Britain. He makes me sick. Or that might just be the gin. Wha’ever. I saw him, right. I saw him walking IN A STRAIGHT LINE down this corridor in Westminster. He wasn’t even singing about green goblins or anything, he was just – sober. There was no vomit dribbling down his chin, his tie was straight. Everything was wrong. He wasn’t slumped in a corner or passed out in a chair… he doesn’t deserve to be a Tory.”

Thrush-on-Cheeks resident Patsy Gibberish said that “it’s high time we were able to recall our MPs. The good name of Thrush-on-Cheeks has been besmirched by the selfish, sober actions of our Member of Parliament. We all remember our last MP, and how he fondled women’s bottoms and ran round the village square with his pants down. That’s what we expect, not this sober, pants-up, tie-wearing, carrot-juice-drinking crap.”

Von Rochester is expected to drink-drive back up to his constituency tomorrow where he will spend the entire day swilling port and whisky on the orders of Tory leader David Cameron, before launching himself face-first into the village pond wearing suspenders and a gas mask.

“‘Operation Sarko’s Coming’ was a huge success,” said David Cameron from his home in Witney, Oxfordshire. “The alarm was raised at approximately 11am this morning when it was announced that the French President would be coming to London, and the way Londoners reacted was simply brilliant. They have been a credit to themselves, and their spirit and enterprise has shone through today.”

“I spoke to one man this afternoon who had commandeered a coach to help as many of his neighbours get out of London. This is what I was talking about when I said I’m proud of the people of Britain – when we have to, we all pull together. I’ve heard stories of people in the Home Counties who have taken as many as twenty Londoners into their houses, allowing them to sleep free of charge on their couches or on the floor, making them cups of tea and generally being good eggs.”

“However, the situation is grave and dangerous. Nicolas Sarkozy is still in London, and until he has gone, I’m afraid we cannot return. He is far too small to be noticed, and I cannot risk the health of our great British citizens. Yes, we must wait. Yes, we must pull together in this period of difficulty. But pull together we shall.”

Government insiders, though, are worried that some elderly people were unable to leave the city before Sarkozy’s train arrived at St. Pancras station, and are drawing up survival documents for anyone thought to be left behind. Advice includes not going out unless absolutely necessary, and washing hands immediately after returning home. Some Londoners are thought to have locked themselves in their houses, having rushed out to buy sufficient supplies to last a week, while shopkeepers have boarded up shopfronts for fear of looters.

Chiswick shopkeeper Benjamin Foothold said that he was “huddled in the back of a delivery van” with his family and ten other business owners, adding: “I don’t know if anything will be left when I get back – but my first thought was – get out, get my family out, and get safe. Everyone was running around like crazy, there were women holding babies… mad, like. Just mad. I think I left the front door open, too. But we’re safe and that’s all that matters.”

Even London’s 300,000 French residents left the city, with many taking the Eurostar back to Paris, claiming that it is “the safest place to be” for the weekend. Jean Aimarre, who runs the local boulangerie in Kensington, said “This little connard is the reason I’m here in London. For the safety of my family, we’re travelling back to France until the situation has resolved itself.”

In trial reviews, Cameron met with members of his own constituency in Witney, and left some feeling shocked. Grandmother Doris Betsy said “he came round and I offered him a cup of tea. He immediately said that I should just use the one tea bag for both cups to save money. Well, that was very clever, but then he went round the house turning off lights and plug points, and told me off for wasting electricity.”

“He stayed for about an hour,” she continued, “and at the end of it, I was shell-shocked. He handed over this sheet of paper with recommendations on it such as ’sell those old books on Amazon’ and ‘use the shower, not the bath’, saying I could make about £23.50 of savings across the year, and he told me to get a draught excluder to save on those heating bills. Some of it was bloody obvious, frankly. Then he said he’s going to come back in a year’s time and if I haven’t done what he suggested, he’ll fine me!”

Cameron’s partner, Nick Clegg, said last night that the reviews were “going to be painful”, adding “some people might not like being told they have to save money, but if we all pull together, then we can get through this. Only yesterday, David visited a man who was using twice as much toothpaste as he could be using. That represents a saving of 70p per month, and he could save even more if he switched to supermarket-own brands instead of Colgate.”

“These are the little things that are going to make the difference, you know,” he continued. “Myself, I’ve learned how to darn socks.”

The coalition government is also holding workshops, full of handy hints on how to save money around the household. David Willets will be holding a “Knit for Britain” workshop in Hull next week, while Teresa May will be coaching the people of Peterborough on how to grow carrots. William Hague, in the meanwhile, is set to tour Britain in a vegetable-oil powered Battle Bus that turns into a walk-in “cost savings” surgery, where any spendthrift consumers can pop in for a dressing down.

“This is all absolutely necessary,” insisted Cameron, “and when I meet with the people of Great Britain, I will be checking that absolutely not one single person has left their television on stand-by overnight, and that everyone has draught excluders.”

In a move to demonstrate that he is not immune to cuts, Osborne has promised voters that he will cut himself in several places with a razor blade. The Chancellor has pledged to use a Bic disposable blade in order to optimise the number of cuts, but senior figures within the opposition are disappointed.

David Blunkett said “A lot of us use Bic disposable blades, and yes, we all get cut every now and again. George’s gesture is nothing more than a gesture. While he’s cutting jobs of 300,000 people, a few nicks here and there won’t compensate. We expect him, at the very least, to carve out his name on his arm and shed at least a pint of blood.”

Osborne will commence the cuts tomorrow morning with what he labels a “slash and burn” approach to shaving. He will use the most basic shaving foam on the market, bought for 60p from Wilkinson’s, and will not even moisten his face beforehand, so as to maximise friction.

“It will be ugly,” he promised. “It will be painful, it will not please my wife, and I will be using some bits of tissue to cover up the bleeding. And, as a final gesture towards those 300,000 people who will be losing their jobs, I will be splashing my face afterwards not with aftershave, but with vodka.”

Senior Tories have lauded the move, with Liam Fox slurring into a microphone “this is f-cking fantastic,” before slumping into a corner. Theresa May has offered to shave Osborne’s back, a move that raised eyebrows, but was eventually turned down by Osborne, who said “that may be going too far.”

John Cruddas told reporters that it was essential the Labour Party take “as long as humanly possible” to choose between the two drinks: “When we do finally sit down, we need to be clear in our minds what we’re all about. Are we a tea party, or are we a coffee party? What does our choice imply? What does it mean to be a tea-drinking Labour supporter in the 21st Century? Is coffee a Tory drink? There are so many questions that remain unanswered. We have to capture the beverage zeitgeist, and that cannot be done in just a couple of months.”

“Personally, I’m neither a tea nor a coffee man and I won’t be drinking either, but I fully support the Labour Party’s long-term beverages strategy.”

The Beverage For a Socialist Future document outlines the procedure for selecting the drink available for the next Labour meeting, which includes an all-membership ballot to take place towards the end of 2010, with regional hustings in the run-up to the first ballot. Several rounds of voting will take place, representing 10% of the final decision, after which the unions will be consulted, and finally the Labour MPs present at the meeting. Labour Party officials have not ruled out the possibility of adding other beverages to the ballot sheets in the goodness of time, and say that they need “to meditate” over the ever-confusing list of options.

Leadership candidate David Milliband weighed into the argument, saying “Tea is tea, that’s fine. We’re fine with that. No bugger drinks green tea, and we’ve only got PG Tips anyway. But coffee’s not just coffee any more, is it? I mean, what happens if someone says – hey, I’m a latte guy but not a cappuccino guy? And who knows the difference between a latte and coffee with milk? Frappuccino? Flat white? We’re entering dangerous territory here, so it’s quite right that we should take our time over this decision. Has no one thought about hot chocolate?”

Ed Milliband said exactly the same thing to reporters afterwards, but added that everything he drank was “Fairtrade” only, which received a few “aw”s from the audience.

The Condemocrats have laughed off accusations that they face the same indecision problems, by mixing tea and coffee together and calling it “teaffee”. David Cleggeron spoke of a “new beverage situation”, telling reporters that “people are sick of us telling them what we’re going to drink, and they’ve quite clearly told us that they want us to drink something in between. Something new. Something inspiring. Something strong and stable. Something, well, frankly… I don’t like it so I’m going to sip at it for a while before throwing it down the sink and getting a coffee. White, of course. We don’t do black.”

He told an undercover reporter: “That first cabinet meeting was a sham for the cameras. The real one took place later, and Osborne kept rapping my knuckles with his ruler. When I complained to Nick and Dave, they just looked away as if nothing had happened. All of a sudden, I felt really lost and alienated, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to be Osborne’s fag. But it’s a coalition, and it’s new politics, so I’m told I have to shut up and put up with it.”

Others have complained about tough woman Theresa May. One Liberal Democrat minister said that May “regularly rounds up Lib Dems from the corridors of Whitehall, locks them in a room and makes them sing ‘we love Theresa May’.” The new Home Secretary has been seen on several occasions with her ear cupped to the door, listening to the strains of ‘we love Theresa May’, as well as screams of ‘it’s dark in here, can someone let us out’ and ‘I think I’ve peed myself’.

One Lib Dem spoke of their collective fear of the drunken Liam Fox, who allegedly stalks the corridors of Whitehall at night with a bottle of gin in one hand, and his “Lib Dem whipping stick” in the other, looking for liberals to hit. “He’s the one who everyone’s really scared of,” admitted a junior minister. “Even the Tories run scared of Fox. I just wish I were in the Labour party right now, they all seem like the happiest losers in the world, and we’re being pushed and bullied around. I want to cry.”

There is hope, however, for Lib Dems. Insiders say that whenever Vince Cable is present, the bullying stops, and Conservative ministers behave impeccably. Mr Cable, when confronted with these reports, said “I don’t believe a word of it. Ever since the coalition started, the Conservatives have been lovely. They speak into my good ear, they help me across the road – frankly, I don’t see what the problem is.”