Christmas Dinner 0-2007AD

Harassed home chefs are today knocking back the cooking sherry and donning their paper party hats in memory of Christmas Dinner, which has passed away at the ripe, old age of 2007 after being shocked at the sight of its carbon footprint, recently calculated by bored boffins at the University of Manchester as generating 55,000 tonnes of CO₂ in the UK alone.

Christmas Dinner was born in 0 AD on the outskirts of Bethlehem in what contemporary estate agents described as "charming, open-plan accommodation with traditional straw and mud floor and en-suite camel, sheep and ox facility". Thanks to the unenlightened attitudes of the time the meal was whipped up by a somewhat irritated Virgin Mary - more than a little tired from the experience of parthenogenesis and dealing with the writ slapped on her by Richard Branson over the use of the trademark Virgin - from whatever lay to hand. Thus it was that the first Christmas Dinner had a notable lack of sprouts and bacon-wrapped sausages and instead went rather heavy on the lamb in gold sauce and camel à la frankincense with a glass of mulled myrrh to wash it down, and that it was eaten by a group of half-cut shepherds, kings and itinerant carpenters who had popped down the pub while Mary was slaving over a hot pile of straw. Notwithstanding this (and the subsequent severe bout of food poisoning the meal engendered, leading Melchior for one to spend the next seven days locked in the bathroom of his hotel in Jerusalem), Christmas Dinner became an instant hit, with Christians across the known world soon lining up on December 25 each year to stuff themselves silly, then feel unwell and irritable for the rest of the afternoon.

Over the next two thousand years, Christmas Dinner spread alongside the religion that bore it, travelling far and wide, often - like Christianity itself - on the end of a pointy sword, long lance or mighty cannon. As it travelled so it came to incorporate all sorts of exotic fare. By the time it had reached Britain a typical Christmas Dinner brought together items such as spices from the Orient, dried fruits from the Mediterranean, turkeys from some godawful shed in Norfolk and a vast array of drinks, including champagnes from France, wines from the New World and that horrible green stuff that tastes like Windolene your Aunty Sal gave you from wherever it was she last went on holiday. Yet even as these newcomers were admitted to the feast, still many old traditions lingered on, particularly the one about all the cooking being left to a harassed female member of the family while the blokes slipped off for a drink. New traditions too were added, from the sullen afternoon slump in front of the Bond movie and the ritual ignoring of the Queen's Speech to the late afternoon punch-up over what Bob said about that horrible green stuff that tastes like Windolene Aunty Sal gave you.

Yet all traditions must eventually come to an end and such was the fate of the Christmas Dinner. With the discovery that assembling the nation's yuletide repast pumped out the same CO₂ as a small power station (not to mention the fact that the impact of all those overcooked green veg on a national stomach more used to pizza, chips and burgers had a similar environmental impact) it was plain that Christmas Dinner's time was up. Unwilling to face a slow decline, the Christmas Dinner picked up the hairdryer Mum had been using for the past three hours in a desperate attempt to thaw out the turkey and garrotted itself with the flex whilst attempting to choke itself on the 50p hidden in the Christmas pud just to make absolutely sure.

Christmas Dinner will be buried beneath a vast pile of roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, peas, sausages-wrapped-in-bacon, boiled carrots, sprouts, roast parsnips, cranberry sauce, chestnut stuffing, bread sauce, Christmas Pudding, mince pies, brandy butter and brandy sauce. It is survived by turkey sandwiches.

The People's Data c 3,800BC - 2007AD

Men and women across Britain are today frantically checking their bank statements for fraudulent withdrawals in memory of The People's Data, which has been tragically lost in a sea of Whitehall incompetence, taking with it the bank records of 25 million individuals and the chief of HM Revenue & Customs, Sir Paul Gray.

The People's Data was first collected in ancient Babylonia in around 3,800BC. Every seven or so years the Babylonian rulers took a census, recording the number of people, their stores of butter, honey, milk, wool and vegetables and their livestock, the data not only giving a useful index of Babylon's prosperity and aiding tax collection, but also explaining where all that dung filling the streets had come from.

From the Babylonians onwards, the collection of The People's Data proved a popular pastime for kings, emperors and other rulers, not only keeping them informed of the health of their city states/kingdoms/empires but also providing a useful distraction from their other favourite pursuits such as wars and having sex with close blood relatives. Indeed so popular were censuses that even God himself got in on the act, ordering Moses to take the number of all the men able to bear arms of the tribes of Israel⁽¹⁾ - a process which proved particularly difficult for Moses as God, being omniscient, could always tell when he'd miscounted.

And so The People's Data continued to be gathered up all the way through history, through the time of the Romans and the Domesday Book and on towards the present day. With more and more data being collected, its storage became increasingly problematic. Indeed, by 1890 the data for the US Census had to be recorded on punched cards - the holes recording either the data of each individual or the passage of the buckshot directed at the census taker when he attempted to obtain that data from backwoodsy types with a hatred of big government and a love of the Second Amendment. Many feared that the collection of so much data in such a small place might lead to it falling into the wrong hands, though such fears were allayed first by the many precautions taken by the US government and, secondly, by the fact that any attempt to read it would have required a card-reader the size of a small house.

It was the arrival of computerisation that saw an explosion in The People's Data. Soon governments across the world were trying to record every last bit of The People's Data they could. And no government was more enthusiastic in this regard than that of the UK, which sought to record everything from people's financial details to the weight of their rubbish bins, their DNA fingerprints, inherited diseases, inside leg measurements and (doubtless) their favourite football teams and sexual preferences. Yet all the while they insisted that the ever-swelling People's Data was in safe hands, despite the fact that those hands belonged to the same people who gave us The Millennium Dome, The Northern Rock Crisis and Government Statistics.

Perhaps, then, we should not have been surprised when those safe hands proved to be butter-fingered, allowing the financial records of more than 25 million Britons to slip from their grasp and into the choppy waters of the Customs and Revenue internal mail system. So it was that the Government was forced to declare The People's Data lost, presumed in the hands of internet fraudsters and identity thieves.

The People's Data will be buried in several computers in Russia, where it will rest in peace until such time as things have quietened down a bit and it can be flogged off to the highest bidder. It is survived by The People's NHS Records, The People's CCTV images and The People's ID cards.

⁽¹⁾ Except the Levites^(2)
(2) Who were instead told to go and manufacture denim jeans, or something ... we may have nodded off at that point in our RE lessons.

Credit c.1000 BC-AD 2007

Credit, the system of getting free stuff on tick and then 'forgetting’ to make the repayments and moving house very quickly, has gone to the great debt collection agency in the sky, following the news that the worldwide Credit Crunch has made life difficult not just for homeowners but also the people who lent them all that money to buy a one-bedroom shoebox in Pinner.

Credit was born in around 1,000BC, when Ancient Babylonians grew tired of exchanging their wives for goats and bulls for asses and instead began exchanging their goods and services for credit receipts drawn up on clay tablets, which were not only easier to stick in the pocket of one's robe but also much less likely than the goats, bulls and asses to leave a nasty mess behind while they were in there.

Thanks to its convenience, Credit soon became a way of life across the globe, with everyone from Roman Emperors to humble Chinese paddy-field workers more than happy to 'buy now, try to avoid the bailiffs later'.

By the eighteenth century 'tallymen'⁽¹⁾ had begun to offer their goods for sale in return for weekly payments. It was not long, however, before Credit began to tire of this itinerant life and decided to go into business in the City, signing on at banking institutions the world over and offering itself out to the highest bidder. By the middle of the twentieth century, Credit was everywhere and consumers were happily signing away the rights to their property, chattels and small children to finance their credit cards, store cards and London Transport Oyster cards.

Yet all was not well. So popular had Credit become that everyone was demanding it ... and so soft-hearted were the institutions for whom Credit worked that they were reluctant to refuse it to anyone at all ... even if they did happen to be a penniless Alabama five-year old with a credit-history that would make Enron blanch and a desperate need for a $2 million mansion and a gold-plated Nintendo Wii. Credit found itself spread thinner and thinner⁽²⁾. As hordes of US homeowners began to default on their loans, Credit began to contemplate its end. Fearful, Credit decided to leave its old friends in the financial institutions behind and go off to lick its wounds at the Bank of England.

Thus it was that when UK building society Northern Rock found itself short of a couple of million shillings to pop in the gas meter, its search for Credit initially proved fruitless. Yet Credit, noble creature that it was, was unwilling to see the tragic little multi-million-pound-organisation- which-had-foolishly-gone-on-bunging-out-mortgages-left-right- and-centre-even-when-every-sane-being-on-the-planet-could-see-a- credit-squeeze-was-coming fail, and so it came down from its lonely Threadneedle Street retreat and offered to lend Northern Rock the money it needed ... after first requiring it to fill in a loan application and have its credit history examined by a surly teenager on the other end of the phone whilst listening to a tinny rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

For all its nobility, the loan was Credit's last mistake: a flood of desperate applications from financially over-stretched borrowers up and down the country caused a run on the Credit markets. And so the Credit Crunch gave way to the Credit Crumble and Credit was no more.

Credit will be buried at St Vorderman's Church of Your Home Could Be At Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Repayments. The undertakers will deliver the casket to the church just as soon as they see the cash… up front… The service will be conducted by Alvin Hall and the congregation will sing Money by Pink Floyd, Money by Berry Gordy (in the style of the Flying Lizards), Money, Money, Money by Abba and Sgt. Northern Rock Isn’t Going To Help Us by XTCCJ.

Credit is survived by Cash On Delivery, Pay As You Go and Crippling Debt.

NB Your mortgage may go up as well as up. Remember your home, bank or building society may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments.

⁽¹⁾ so-called because they kept a record or ‘tally’ of what people had bought on a wooden stick ... which also proved useful in persuading them to pay up every week.
⁽²⁾ not to mention squeezed into a series of financial vehicles of such complexity and opacity that the only people who ever understood them are now either mad, dead or earning a fortune working out the answers to late night TV phone-in quizzes.

The US Troop Surge's Tour of Iraq 2007-2008

The streets of Baghdad were today filled with emptiness as the people of that shining jewel 'mid the Mesopotamian sands chose to commemorate the ending of the US Troop Surge's Tour of Iraq by not going out in case they got blown up by a celebrating insurgent or decorated with bits of their own anatomy by happy and contented members of a rival tribal group.

It was on January 10th 2007 that President Bush announced The Surge's birth to a joyful nation. The President's child was a bonny and bouncing baby, whose mere presence - the President assured America - was enough to bring a powerful desire for peace and democracy (not to mention a deep wish to run away from the 30,000 heavily armed new troops) to any "evildoer".

Though still very young, Mr Bush's baby was sent away in February 2007 to gain an education in the ways of nascent democracy - taking in extra tuition on the ways of Explosively Formed Penetrator warheads - on a grand tour of Northern Iraq. Led by its new tour guide, General David Petraeus⁽¹⁾, The Surge was shown the many sights of the ancient streets of Baghdad, from the delights of its famous illuminations⁽²⁾ to the charms of its many insurgents, always eager to greet a foreign soldier with a smile on their face and a bomb near their heart.

Despite the many highlights of its tour, the root of The Surge's ultimate disappointment was to be found in the fact the chief object of its journey - a successful democratic government in Iraq - was closed for the summer and not expected to open for at least several decades. Unable to see the shining beacon of democracy promised to it by Mr Bush, The Surge instead had to content itself with amassing a large supply of souvenir mortar rounds, bullets and Improvised Explosive Devices readily provided by local militia groups. Bored, tired and missing home, The Surge began to complain about the length of its tour and wonder aloud about the whole purpose of its trip.

Unable to show his tour group any sign of functioning government, General Petraeus was forced to put a brave face on things, gamely telling anyone who asked him that he was sure that democracy would soon be up and running in Iraq, whilst at the same time announcing that The Surge's tour of Iraq would soon be brought to an end.

The US Troop Surge in Iraq will be quietly buried in mid-2008 at St Rumsfeld's Church of the Holy Jesus What Kind of A Mess Has This Doofus Left Behind?! It was predeceased by the British Military Presence in Basra and is survived by an Iraqi Government unable to find its arse with both hands.

⁽¹⁾ a man easily distinguishable from previous tour guides provided to the US Army in Iraq by the fact that he doesn't believe Al Fallujah is that guy down the block who runs the falafel stand.
⁽²⁾ usually, given the unreliability of the electricity supply, a couple of candles and the odd bomb explosion.

British Military Presence in Basra 2003-2007

The British Military Presence in Basra, part of that joint mission with the United States to extract oil from bring peace and democracy to the benighted country of Iraq, has been zipped up in a body bag as troops withdrew relocated to the airport – marking the end of a foreign adventure with all the mishap-free success of M. Hulot's Holiday.

The British Military Presence in Basra was first established in 1917 as our brave Tommies secured the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s interests in neighbouring Persia freed the region from the evil clutches of the Ottoman Empire, and formed the modern state of Iraq from three rival ethnic groups – the Kurds, the Shi’as and the Sunnis – who have, ever since, co-existed peacefully with their new neighbours.

Granting independence to Iraq in 1932 the British retained a military presence in the region because large deposits of oil had been discovered there, re-invading the country in 1941 to stop Germany from stealing the oil and just “minding it for the Iraqis” for a short while as part of the struggle against the evils of Hitler. Despite British heroism in defence of the oil 17 years later an ungrateful Iraqi Army overthrew the Anglophile puppet government monarchy and set about using their new-found freedom and economic independence to terrorise their population all by themselves.

And so, for a while, Britain withdrew altogether from Iraq. In 1991, however, the latest of Baghdad's loyal friends of the West despots, Saddam Hussein, had set his sights on Kuwait’s oil fields and American and British troops again invaded to restore peace and democracy. While the Americans stopped short of Baghdad, our brave boys conquered Basra and soon felt at home there amidst its ancient streets and traditional Officer’s Club and NAAFI (est. 1917). Withdrawing from the city after a regimental sherry and bridge evening got out of hand, British troops were powerless to intervene as the Republican Guard slaughtered Shi’as in their thousands.

Following the discovery of weapons of mass destruction a dodgy thesis written by a Canadian student a fictional link between the Saddam regime and Al Qaeda, the Allies were welcomed back into Iraq as heroic liberators in 2003, as Tony Blair decided to make his mark in history and to be judged by God back Donald Rumsfeld's George W. Bush’s daring plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein and free Iraq’s giant oil reserves.

Although it was our American allies who were to bear the brunt of Iraqi ingratitude for bombing their country back to the Stone Age liberating their oil them from the nightmare of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, even in Basra mutterings of discontent were heard. Soon these mutterings grew into a more audible collective tut and British troops found they were no longer welcome in the city’s clubs and late-night kebab houses, unless accompanied by a large amount of bombing and rifle-fire from local insurgents.

So it was this week that the “pre-planned” decision to withdraw all British troops to the city’s airport was taken amidst much criticism from the Americans whose decision to “surge” more troops into Baghdad earlier in the year had so successfully pushed the insurgents into the rest of the country and enabled the Iraqi government to take a well deserved holiday.

Denying accusations that they were abandoning Basra to the Iraqi Army – an organisation with all the effectiveness of Warmington-on-Sea's Home Guard (but with better weapons) and all the loyalty to its leadership of a member of the Tory party, the Queen’s Own Light Baggage Handlers Brigade and 2 Para Confiscation of Water Bottles and Nail Files Battalion quickly established control of Basra airport and began merrily wishing happy tourists and business travellers “a good one-way flight out of Basra”.

And so it was that with the US accusing the UK of abandoning Basra and the UK accusing the US’s policy in Iraq of being “fatally flawed”, the last post was sounded and the owners of Basra’s clubs and late-night kebab houses breathed a sigh of relief.

The British Military Presence in Basra will be buried very quietly. The service will be conducted by the CEO of British Petroleum. It is not expected that our American allies will attend. It is survived by The British Military Presence in Afghanistan and The British Military Presence in Aldershot – both of which have been causing much hardship and unhappiness to locals since the 19th century.

The Middle East 3,000BC-2007AD

It is with great sadness (and not a little alarm), that As A Dodo must today report what is understood to be the imminent passing of the Middle East - that part of the world that saw the creation of civilisation, the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and (partly as a consequence of those three births) the fomentation of several thousand years of conflict and destruction - following news that a Mr Tony Blair, former resident of Downing Street and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is to be appointed as Special Envoy to the region.

The Middle East was born in about 3,000BC when peoples in and around Egypt, Gaza and Mesopotamia became tired of the boring aspects of a life of itinerant goat-and-camel-herding (the boring bits being just about everything to do with goat-and-camel herding, especially all the getting spat at and butted by those they were responsible for ⁽¹⁾) and decided to build themselves a more settled and less goat-and-camel-intensive existence by setting up mighty city states.

Now free from the constant butting and spitting that had so distracted them in their past lives, the people of those city states were able to go about the business of creating the foundations of civilisation, such as reading, writing, mathematics, politics and having really good wars. This last was particularly aided by the habit of those in the region of coming up with new and mutually incompatible religions.

The millennia would see the rise and fall of many civilisations and empires in the region: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Ancient Egyptians and Assyrians were all to find themselves on top at one point and wiped away the next. Soon the Romans were getting in on the act, incidentally deciding to sow the seeds of future conflict by destroying the Jewish temple and abolishing the land of Israel. The (initially) pagan Romans themselves were later replaced as regional rulers by the Christian Byzantines. By the 7th Century AD they were to find themselves having to share space with the newly arrived Muslims. With Jews, Muslims and Christians all reluctantly sharing the same land and all convinced that the region of Palestine was really, really sacred to them, the conditions for a really good scrap were now set.

Over the next several hundred years, the peoples of the region - along with various Crusaders, Turks, Mongols, Ottomans, Germans, Italians, French, British and Americans - would do their best to ensure that the fighting never ceased. Yet somehow the region managed to survive ... until today. For today it became clear that the powers of Europe, Russia, America and the UN had chosen to give responsibility for assisting peace negotiations in the Middle East to none other than Tony Blair, a man whose policies on the region have proved so unpopular with his own people that he has been forced into a premature resignation.

Mr Blair impressed reporters with his immediate pledge to "do whatever is necessary" to find an "enduring resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue" ... provided always that "whatever is necessary" didn't mean disagreeing with President Bush. He is expected to set off for the region - guitar in hand, crucifix in pocket and cilice round thigh - as soon as possible to re-start peace negotiations, a process it is understood that he plans to assist by lightening the current awkward atmosphere by persuading his good pal Sir Cliff Richard to sing a couple of choruses of The Millennium Prayer to the assembled representatives of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Hamas and Fatah before calling - like President Bush before him - for all those present to show a little Christian charity to each other ... and then suggesting the whole Middle East problem could be resolved by bombing Iran.

The Middle East will be buried under large piles of rubble and a weatherbeaten "road map for peace" at St Tony's Church of the Legacy. It will be survived by increased oil prices, nuclear proliferation, numerous terrorist groups and 15 iPods the captured British sailors left behind in Iran.

⁽¹⁾ Interestingly, these same things are today the most boring bits about being a Premiership referee.

PS As A Dodo readers wishing to revel in contemplate the Prime Minister's departure may wish to click on our obituary for Tony Blair's Premiership.

Prince Harry's Bad Boy Reputation 2002-2007: A Correction

We at As A Dodo Towers wish to apologise to our readers for yet another massive cock-up serious errors in our obituary for Prince Harry's Bad Boy Reputation. We have been contacted by officials at Clarence House who have asked us to note that senior Army officers have now realised that it is entirely possible that as (a) a soldier in the British army and (b) in all probability the son of the heir to the throne, there is some slight chance of the young Prince being targeted by those opposing the British and American presence in that benighted land⁽¹⁾. Indeed we further understand from reports in the British press (apparently based on a conversation with someone in the pub, who knows a bloke who knows a bloke who once read Andy McNab's "Bravo Two Zero") that orders have already been issued to an unidentified (and almost certainly fictional) sniper to regard Prince Harry as his sole target⁽²⁾. In the circumstances we have been asked to point out that Prince Harry will not now be joining his regiment in Iraq and, accordingly, his Bad Boy Reputation will, far from being dead, continue to get drunk at West End nightclubs, dress up in Nazi regalia and punch the odd journalist just for the hell of it.

We apologise most sincerely for any distress our report may have caused to either the Prince's family or to tabloid editors desperate for a Royal story for the front page.

⁽¹⁾ currently understood to be everyone in Iraq except the guy with the lucrative illicit booze contract for the US forces at Baghdad's Camp Justice.
⁽²⁾ we are further advised that Mohammed Al fayed's lawyers are now seeking to have the current inquest into Diana, Princess of Wales, ruled a nullity owing to the refusal of the coroner, Baroness Butler-Sloss to allow them to call this same fictional sniper to give evidence.

Congress's Timetable for Withdrawal from Iraq 26 April 2007 - 1 May 2007

Four years to the day after he, somewhat prematurely, donned his best GI Joe fighter-pilot outfit to report the death of the War with Iraq (we must confess that at the time of his announcement the President was As A Dodo's Washington correspondent. Having thus contributed to our already dubious reputation for accuracy (for an example of which see eg here) and having developed a habit of leaving copies of the Gideon bible in our bedside tables and improving homilies about the dangers of alcohol all over As A Dodo Towers on every visit, we regret that we had no alternative but to fire him), President George W Bush has now confirmed the death of Congress's Timetable for Withdrawal from Iraq.

The Timetable was born in the final days of April 2007, when a Congress eager to be seen to be doing something about the war with Iraq (and even more eager to have a multi-billion dollar bargaining chip to back up its negotiations with the President) insisted on attaching a timetable for withdrawal to a bill providing funding for the continued US presence in that benighted part of the globe.

From its first moments it was plain that the Timetable could not hope to survive beyond a few days. The merest glance at its delicate frame revealed it to be not merely a transparent attempt to gain political capital but also a bid to humiliate the President, the Timetable containing as it did not merely detailed plans for withdrawal from Iraq but also a requirement that Mr Bush attend double English lessons in the morning and Geography lessons in the afternoon (the latter presumably aimed at persuading him that - contrary to the assertions of Vice-President Cheney - Iraq could not be confused either with Al Qaeda's former base of operations in Afghanistan or the home of the 9/11 suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia).

Indeed, so lacking in strength was the Timetable that it took it some five days to struggle the mile from Congress to the White House. By the time it arrived, the President made it plain that he had no alternative but to put it out of its misery, consigning it to oblivion with a stab of a pen which he let be known (in an in-no-way utterly distasteful manner) had been given to him by the father of a marine killed in Iraq two years ago.

Seeking - like Brutus on the steps of the forum - to justify his actions, the President announced that the bill had sought to "substitute the opinions of politicians for the judgements of military commanders" - an action which he wholly condemned (unless the politicians in question were Paul "I could be so good for you, baby" Wolfowitz or Donald "I see no torture" Rumsfeld) - as well as "setting a timetable for chaos and confusion" that would "demoralise the Iraqi people and encourage killers across the Middle East", which tasks the President's administration already had well in hand.

Thus it was that the Timetable passed away. It will be buried quietly this weekend at the Church of St Mike Dukakis the Politically Hopeless. The Reverend Hillary Clinton will read from the Book of "What Me? Vote for the War? 'Fraid You've Got the Wrong Person, Squire. I was Tying my Shoelaces at the Time" and the hymn will be Number 582 "There is a Baghdad Far Away Without a City Wall, Reliable Electricity or Working Plumbing".

A Simple Cup of Coffee c. 9th Century-2007

A Simple Cup of Coffee has been drained from its simple cup for the last time after being swamped by the planet's unchecked demand for increasingly baroque and bastardised coffee hybrids including frappaccinos, mochaccinnos and latteccinos served by overworked East Europeans and South East Asians living in eternal fear of being docked pay for failing to say "Have a nice day" with the proper company-approved sincere expression.

A Simple Cup of Coffee was first brewed from the roasted beans of the coffee plant in Ethiopia in the 9th century, proving so stimulating that, after drinking just one cup, coffee exporters stayed up for six straight months, only falling asleep after flogging gallons of the new beverage as far as Egypt and Yemen.

After expanding steadily throughout the Middle East and thus helping to promote the calm and relaxed attitude which pervades the region even to this day, by the 17th century the new brew had reached Europe, with the Dutch in particular enjoying the benefits of increased blood pressure and heart rate of A Simple Cup of Coffee in their world-famous coffee houses, so much so that they were soon forced to start taking massive tokes on the nearest available spliff to calm themselves down.

Soon London merchants were gathering to discuss shipping news in Lloyd’s Coffee House, where their massive intake led them to become so excited that they set up a whole stock market, whose vast profits were able to fund the expansion of the British Empire as well as allowing the traders to afford ever greater quantities of their favourite stimulants, thus encouraging major South American exports... and several coffee growers as well.

The practice of stumbling from one’s bed half-dumb with fatigue towards the stove to brew up an energising cup spread to the New World – but not until the third cup of coffee had hit the spot. Indeed, the American War of Independence was started by the craze for a good cup of mud after jittery Bostonians rejected a shipment of tea, angrily throwing it into the harbour – even though the water wasn’t boiling and they hadn't added the milk first.

Soon the world was enslaved by this narcotic drink, with only a few plucky Britons holding out against its tyranny – preferring a refreshing beverage made with just dried leaves and boiling water... plus a large side order of gin. But as the British Empire crumbled and Britain’s rightful role as a leading world power began to fade, even this bastion of tea-drinking limeys succumbed to the great roasted flavour and became a nation of coffee-heads thanks to A Simple Cup of Coffee's addictive allure and the persuasive powers of the late actor and item of celebrity rhyming slang Gareth Hunt’s dubious wrist gesture.

But even as Britons began to crave a cup of the hard stuff in the mornings, Americans were growing tired of A Simple Cup of Coffee and began experimenting with new ways of ingesting their favourite drug, mixing it with cold sugary colas, adding it to the water supply and cross-breeding it with flavoured syrups and giving it faux Italian names with the suffix -ccino.

The fatal blow was dealt this week with the introduction of Shower Shock soap, which releases the same amount of caffeine into the bloodstream as a couple of cups of coffee – as you lather yourself in the shower to achieve that just scrubbed roasted fresh smell in the mornings. Appalled at the news, A Simple Cup of coffee expired in a wave of bitter suds.

A Simple Cup of Coffee will be buried at the St Arbucks Church of the Decaf Super Grande Skinny Mochalattefrappaespressoccino. The service will be conducted by Gunther from Friends. It is survived by a decaf super grande skinny mochalattefrappaespressoccino… and a nice cup of tea.

The Prospect of Des Browne Falling on His Sword 6 April 2007 – 16 April 2007

The Prospect of Defence Secretary Des Browne Falling on His Sword, following the media and political furore over his decision to allow the 15 sailors captured by the Iranians to sell their stories to the highest bidder, has passed away following a statement by Mr Browne in the House of Commons, during which he apologised for making a mistake but failed utterly to plummet on to the assorted sabres, daggers, katanas, zweihanders, rapiers, spadones and schiavonas proffered by members of the opposition parties, much to the disappointment of the large crowd that had gathered to witness the death-defying-enabling feat.

The Prospect was conceived rapidly following the release of the Iraq hostages when the Defence Secretary chose the aftermath of one of the more significant naval cock-ups since Robert Maxwell accidentally took up deep-sea-diving to go on holiday and thus failed to question the Navy’s ruling that the sailors could profit from their tales of derring-do and attempts to escape their captors by doing exactly as they were told.

The Prospect was a popular child from the moment of its conception as the newspapers that had failed to offer enough money to secure the sailors’ stories called instead for Mr Browne to thrust his breast forcefully on the nearest pointy object, claiming that sensational tabloid revelations about the sailors' plucky plan to outwit the Iranians – by agreeing to be paraded on Iranian television praising their captors, calling for Britain and America's immediate withdrawal from Iraq and having a nice cup of tea – had caused more damage to the reputation of the Navy than the carnage resulting from a Saturday night in a Plymouth public house.

Despite the Prospect's popularity, it was clear from the outset that the child's father, Mr Browne, had little time for it. Within days of its birth he was already denying he was its father and seeking to smother it by reversing his earlier decision and halting the further sale of stories by the nation’s greatest military heroes since Captain Mainwaring and Corporal Jones.

Despite - or perhaps even because of - its father's callous attitude towards it, the Prospect remained dear to the hearts of large sections of the press, the opposition parties and Iran's President Ahmadinejad. Speculation reached fever pitch as a nation held its breath for Mr Browne's Commons statement, fully expecting him to the decent thing, acknowledge his parentage of the Prospect and allow it to fulfil it's destiny by dropping him on to the nearest sharp implement from a great height.

It was not to be. Expressing "a degree of regret that can be equated with an apology”, Mr Browne failed utterly to acknowledge his offspring, leaving it to pass away as peacefully as a boat full of Royal Navy ratings and Marines surrendering to an Iranian boarding party.

The Prospect of Des Browne Falling on His Sword will be buried quietly at sea, but not too close to Iranian waters. It is survived by the Prospect of Des Browne Being Brutally Assassinated in Gordon Brown's Cabinet Reshuffle.

The Iran Hostage Crisis 23 March 2007-5 April 2007

Having received the following obituary for the recent Iran Hostage Crisis, we at As A Dodo wish to make it plain that we now recognise that entrusting it to our religious correspondent may have been an error, especially at Easter time when his blood sugar was running at a rather higher level than normal, pumped up on Hot Cross Buns and Easter Eggs. We apologise.

Now the feast of Passover drew nigh, as did the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet and of the crucifixion of the Lord and the feast of the giant chocolate eggs, when the Thorntonites do celebrate their profit-spike and do fail to apologise for pronouncing "chocolatier" to rhyme with "musketeer".

And lo fifteen men and women of the British Royal Navy did sail upon the waters of the Gulf, where they did carry out a UN mandated patrol. And while they were patrolling upon the waters a force of Iranians did come among them and did seize them, saying that the waters upon which they patrolled were the waters of Iran, whatever their GPS might say. And so the fifteen did go with them, for they had had no training as to what to do in such circumstances save for a twenty-minute videotape advising them "not to do anything stupid".

And so the fifteen were taken unto Tehran where they were sore afflicted, being forced to wear ill-fitting Iranian suits and to play chess and smoke cigarettes and lark about a bit for the cameras.

And lo there was a voice crying in the wilderness, which is Texas, and that voice did cry "That ain't no way to conduct a snatch operation! Thou shouldst have seized the sailors and placed them in garments of orange and bound their hands and gagged their mouths and hooded their heads. And verily thou shouldst then have rendered them up unto the tender mercies of inquisitors in Egypt or Eastern Europe where the inquisitors might smite them about the head and the body and might attach electrodes to their testicles and set dogs upon them and then baptise them for many minutes at a time, until they do admit whatsoever sins the inquisitors may counsel them, in their mercy, to admit. That is what thou shouldst have done with these enemy combatants for that is what I would have done".

But the lone voice went unheeded and instead there was a wailing and a gnashing of teeth at the viciousness of the conduct of the Iranians towards their captives. And there was a general feeling among the people of America and Britain that they would have acted much better, despite all the evidence that they wouldn't.

And lo upon the thirteenth day the President of Iran, who is Ahmadinejad, and who does believe himself to be an instrument of the Lord most high, in which he is like unto the President of America and the Prime Minister of Britain, did go unto the peoples of the press. And Ahmadinejad did speak unto the peoples of the press, saying "And now is the anniversary of the Prophet's birth and of the crucifixion of him that is called Jesus and the feast of the Passover and a really good time for me to get some good publicity for myself after doing unto the economy of my nation what the peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah didst unto each other and unto their sheep and their goats. And lo, as a show of good will towards the British people and some great PR for myself, I shall release these sailors".

And all the people did cry out saying "Yes, release them", save for one voice that did cry "No, welease Bwian", but the people mocked him for he was a Pythonite.

And so it came to pass that the fifteen were made to appear before the President and shake his hand and thank him for his kindness and then they were returned unto Britain, where they will be hailed in a manner like unto the Lord coming into Jerusalem on the back of an ass before, if I am any judge of the British media, being crucified by the papers in a few days time for having failed to give only their name, rank and serial number, for the British press are a wicked people who shall do anything for a story.

The As A Dodo editors add: The Iran Hostage Crisis will be buried under a large pile of newsprint and a lengthy inquiry into GPS readings. It is survived by a very self-satisfied Iranian President.

Prince Harry's Bad Boy Reputation 2002-2007

Buckingham Palace insiders and Ministry of Defence officials have today confirmed to a shocked nation that the "Bad Boy" reputation of third in line to the British throne Prince Harry has passed away, replaced in its prime by the heroic reputation of plain "Cornet Wales": not, as some had assumed, a Duchy Organic ice cream flavour but rather the title the Prince will bear during his military service in Iraq as a member of the Blues and Royals Regiment.

Prince Harry's Bad Boy reputation was born in 2002. Like so many Bad Boys, Prince Harry earned his reputation after years of living off the state and wandering around aimlessly on vast estates. Though admittedly the estates Harry wandered around had much better grouse shooting than the average inner-city tower block, the Prince nonetheless followed the path of many a bored British teen and began drinking heavily and smoking cannabis. Relatives feared these habits might go from bad to worse, leading to addiction to hard drugs or even dabbling with standing for the Conservative leadership.

Despite the Prince's antics having landed him on the front page of every British tabloid, there were soon concerns for his newbown Bad Boy Reputation when it was announced that he would be attending a drug counselling centre for a day. Much to the consternation of all those - chiefly newspaper editors - who cared about the Reputation, Harry soon seemed to have turned his back on his rebellious ways and learned to follow more traditional Royal standards of behaviour, falling off polo ponies and calling his French chef a "F***ing Frog".

Happily for all concerned, Harry was soon back on form again and by 2005 he was partying the nights away in West End nightclubs and engaging in drunken scuffles with members of the paparazzi.

In the same year the Prince entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, intent on becoming a cavalry officer despite warnings that he was obviously overqualified for such a post, being in possession of a chin. Thankfully he passed the Sandhurst intelligence test with flying colours, pushing hard on a door marked "pull" for well in excess of the half hour normally required for officer material. Those who feared that pulling on the uniform his ancestors had worn with pride might prove a fatal blow to his Bad Boy reputation were proved wrong when the uniform in question turned out to be that of a Schutzstaffel Oberfũhrer.

Despite such positive signs, Prince Harry's Bad Boy Reputation - a vital part of both the nation's heritage and the newspaper circulation battle - slipped away this week following the announcement that the Prince is to lead a troop of 12 men in Iraq. The Reputation will be buried with full military honours and an item of fruit inserted in its rear after a street brawl outside a Mayfair nightspot. It is survived by acres of newsprint praising Harry as a modern-day Achilles and the only 12 British soldiers in Iraq who can be absolutely confident of having all the latest military equipment (boots, body armour, working guns) and backup they could ever want.

Bush and Blair 2001-2007

Comedy fans are mourning the death of one of the world's funniest double acts, Bush and Blair, following today's shock announcement by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he has decided to withdraw from his comic partnership with the USA's President George Bush and will no longer be joining him on the set of the latest in their series of hilarious "Road To" movies, "The Road To A New Vietnam".

It was in 2001 that Tony Blair decided to replace his former sidekick Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton after Clinton's comic persona as a loveable lothario - and catchphrase "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" - began to prove box-office death in America's post-millennial moral climate. Initially Blair had hoped to hook up with Clinton's old straight man, Al Gore, but was to opt instead for the guy behind the tongue-tied goof routine that stole American hearts and votes during the 2000 Presidential Election.

Almost immediately Bush and Blair began preparations for their hilariously titled - and now notorious - "Bringing Democracy" World Tour, Blair spending each day working on the wonderfully ludicrous "I'm a Pretty Straight Kinda Guy" routine that had won him the laughter of audiences across the United Kingdom, while Dubya perfected everything from his "Kenny Boy Lay? - Never Met Him In My Life" skit to the death-defying piece of physical comedy that was "Chewing A Pretzel".

With Bush and Blair's comic characters in place, Dubya playing a knuckle-dragging jock and Blair the smooth-talking poodle that insisted on following him everywhere he went, Bush's long-time manager Dick Cheney spotted the box-office potential in the sequence of scripts that would become the pair's "Road To" movies. Soon they were laughing on "The Road to Democracy", sweeping along the dusty "Road to Afghanistan Liberation" and crying on "The Road to Iraqi Freedom" (known in Britain under the title "The Road to Electoral Suicide").

It was during the filming of the last of these three movies that rumours of a split first began to surface. Crew members reported the sounds of heated arguments emerging from the pair's trailer and more and more often the once inseparable duo were seen to arrive and leave the set apart. The cause, some claim, was the latest script optioned for the pair by Mr Cheney, "The Road To Iran" (also known as "The Road to Armageddon"). Whatever the basis for the dispute, it was increasingly clear that relations between the two men had begun to sour. Indeed it came as little surprise when, on Tuesday night, Mr Blair announced that he would be pulling out of the duo's latest lraq tour, "The Big Troop Surge", to concentrate on other projects.

The comedy duo that was Bush and Blair will be remembered fondly by its fans, both of whom can be found in a secure wing of The Charge of the Light Brigade Hospital for the Militarily Insane.

Bush and Blair are now working on their solo projects: Tony Blair's "Legacy Tour" (fans should be aware that the tour has now been considerably shortened) and George Bush's "Who Gives A Crap? I Ain't Standing For Election Again" stand-up appearances in Washington's premier comedy venue, the White House.

Cleopatra's Beauty c51BC-2007AD

The reputation of Egypt's Queen Cleopatra VII for beauty - a reputation burnished down the ages by such great writers as Lucan, Shakespeare and the authors of short-lived sci-fi show Cleopatra 2525 - has died, choked on a single Roman coin.

Born in about 51BC, following Cleopatra's accession to the throne of Egypt at the age of eighteen, Cleopatra's reputation for beauty was rapidly spread about the whole of the known world, chiefly by drunken sailors for most of whom the last sight of a female was "that dolphin off the coast of Asia Minor that was giving me the eye last week". The fame of her alleged beauty grew even greater in 48BC, following the Queen's usurpation by her co-ruler and brother Ptolemy XIII and her subsequent exile.

By the time of Ptolemy's defeat by Julius Caesar later in 48BC, Cleopatra's beauty was known even in Rome itself. Keen to capitalise on the situation, the Queen decided to woo the Roman leader by having herself delivered to him in the Palace at Alexandria rolled up inside a Persian carpet ... which it now seems she probably didn't remove before wooing him. Caesar himself being (a) a man, (b) very important and (c) a man - as well as being no great catch in the love stakes given that he was getting on a bit, frequently suffered fits and possessed a head of hair so sparse that even Donald Trump's barber would have been at a loss to deal with it - insisted that it be put about that he had been making love to the most beautiful woman in the world and thus a legend was born.

The Queen's allure gained even more lustre following Caesar's death, when she successfully wooed his closest follower, Mark Antony, with a combination of her charm, wit and - it would now seem - some very carefully arranged lighting. The passionate nature of their relationship, in which they came close to ruling much of the known world, became a byword among the ancients, much as the relationship of David and Victoria Beckham is today. The romance of the relationship's ending, with each killing themselves at the thought of the other's loss, inspired generations. 1600 years later William Shakespeare himself recorded the Queen's extraordinary loveliness in his Antony and Cleopatra, although his judgment in this regard may well be brought into question by the fact he did insist she be played by a young boy. Soon she was being played by the greatest beauties of every age from Elizabeth Taylor to ... er ... Judi Dench.

Having survived more than 2,000 years, Cleopatra's Beauty breathed its last on Valentine's Day 2007, when the unearthing of a coin bearing the heads of both Anthony and Cleopatra by Newcastle University revealed that the two of them were so ugly that, inasmuch as they may have spent long nights of passion together, each probably insisted the other wear a bag over their head throughout.

Cleopatra's Beauty will be buried at the Nicky-Hambleton Jones Church of the Botox-Frozen Forehead. It is survived by Cleo Lane, Cleo Rocos, the Renault Clio and a production of Anthony and Cleopatra starring Bernard Manning as the Queen of Egypt.

Saddam Hussein 1937-2006

The sudden death of Saddam Hussein in the early hours of this morning in a secure facility in Northern Baghdad will have come as a surprise only to those who presumed that the "highly trained" Iraqi officers who were given custody of him yesterday were bound to be either (a) so incompetent or (b) so corrupt that they expected the former dictator to have escaped and secured his own Al Jazeera chatshow by tonight.

Born in 1937, Saddam enjoyed the kind of brutal upbringing that fitted him only for the role of dictator or multi-million-selling author of childhood memoirs suitable as reading matter only for voyeuristic weirdos. Sadly for the world, but not for literature, Saddam was to choose the former path.

Always a happy-go-lucky evil bastard, the young Saddam spent much of his youth hanging around with his best friend. It is a mark of the society in which he was living at the time that the fact that his best friend was an iron bar with which he used to beat people and torture small animals was not seen as particularly odd. It is even more a mark of that society that Saddam was to prove his manhood to his elders by killing four people - a requirement usually unheard of outside James Bond novels and the upper echelons of city solicitors firms.

Ambitious to escape his home town of Tikrit and ever-eager to find new opportunities to do unto others before they could even think of doing unto him, Saddam was to join the Ba'ath party in the mid-1950s. By 1959 he was already playing a prominent role in national politics, being the man responsible for bungling an attempt to kill Iraq's recently self-installed revolutionary leader, general Abdul Qarim Qassim, when - like many a young man before and after him - his powerful weapon went off in his hand prematurely.

Having fled to Cairo after the failed assassination attempt, Saddam was to return to Iraq in 1963 following the fall of the Qassim regime. Taking control of his Party's civilian apparatus in a way unseen since Stalin and not seen again until the rise of Peter Mandelson, Saddam found himself the power behind the throne of President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr following the Ba'athists "glorious July 1968 revolution".

In the following years Saddam was to preside over many Ba'athist reigns of terror and was responsible for the sudden disappearance of vast numbers, along with beatings, torture, murder and other practices which the whole world, except Dick Cheney, condemns.

By 1979, after overseeing a series of bloody purges both within and without the party, Saddam was ready to assume power. Ousting his former friend President Bakr with a cold-blooded ruthlessness unseen outside the vicinity of the struggle for the last Roland Mouret dress in the Harvey Nichols sale, the new President Saddam was quick to celebrate his ascent to power by holding a massive show trial, in which he persuaded half his party to condemn the other half (a feat which he achieved through terror, rather than the method favoured at British wedding celebrations where a simple mumbled reference to "what your Sheila said about Dawn's wedding dress" will usually achieve the same result).

With Western governments and Middle-Eastern hereditary rulers always eager to find an evil dictator to favour for their own geo-political ends, Saddam soon found himself courted by all, sundry and Donald Rumsfeld. He increased his popularity with these regimes even further when in 1980 he launched his eight-year war against the Iranian theocracy, thus securing himself supplies of cash from the Gulf states and arms and technology from the West, not to mention a virtual guarantee that every Western state would be tying its shoelaces or looking the other way when he decided to "solve the Kurdish problem" by gassing thousands at Halabja and in "operation Anfal".

As convinced of his genius as any deluded X-Factor wannabe or, indeed, British Prime Minister, Saddam was to follow up his humiliating score draw with Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iran-Iraq war with the even more unsuccessful assault on Kuwait in 1990, resulting in a crushing defeat mere months later. Despite this, thanks to his own ruthlessness and the failure of the West to support those they had told to rise up against him, Saddam was able to remain in power for another 12 years, keeping enemies at bay with fantasies of stores of weapons of mass destruction and friends onside with the fear of Iran.

Sadly for Saddam his invented arsenal, along with the fantasies of the neocons, a President apparently lacking the necessary brainpower to watch TV and eat pretzels at the same time and a media willing to associate his regime with the World Trade Centre attack of 11 September 2001 despite there being less evidence to link the two than there is to link Bono with humility, was to prove the ruthless leader's, and Iraq's, undoing. Within weeks of America's invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam was to find himself, like many of his "liberated" fellow countrymen, living in a hole with no access to regular water or electricity and in constant fear of being shot or blown up. With his discovery by US forces in December 2003 and subsequent trial, his end became inevitable.

Saddam Hussein is survived by chaos in Iraq, a nuclear-capable North Korea, an ever-more-powerful hardline regime in Iran led by a man who believes himself to be the Mahdi and the Bush presidency.

Dodo News Alert: Tony Blair's Sanity

As A Dodo has received as yet unconfirmed reports of the Death of Tony Blair's Sanity. Following a series of health scares over the past nine years (many occurring shortly after meetings with President George W Bush), it is being reported that Mr Blair's Sanity has finally passed away in Dubai whilst calling for the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan to defend democracy. Claims are coming in that the death of the Prime Minister's Sanity was masked by the huge peals of uncontrollable laughter coming from his audience of unelected rulers-by-birth whose word is law and whose money is kept in Swiss bank accounts.

More on this if and when our freedom-loving government grants us permission to release this or any other information.

News alert ends

Iraq Study Group 15 March 2006 - 6 December 2006

The Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel commissioned to suggest policy recommendation on the Iraqi conflict, was gunned down in cold blood in Washington DC on Thursday.

Headed by former Secretary of State James Baker, the ISG was first appointed in March of this year to analyse and investigate the surprising lack of success in bringing peace, democracy and freedom to Iraq following the US-led decision to bomb the crap out of it in the name of peace, democracy and freedom.

In September, Baker claimed there was no “magic bullet” to resolve the Iraqi conflict, displaying a sensitive command of the English language and a wholesome lack of irony that confirmed he was the right man to head the commission.

After nine months of extensive investigation and vigorous political debate, the ISG revealed its 79 recommendations for resolving the conflict in Iraq including: cut and run, run away, give up, blame it on someone else, and start a war with another country to distract attention from the godawful mess we're in.

Just minutes after releasing its ground-breaking formula for peace, an assailant known only as “The President” calmly strolled up to the presidential podium in full view of the world’s media assembled at the White House and began pumping bullets into the body of the ISG - shouting that Iran and Syria could only sit down at the table if they made some decisions which lead to “peace, not conflict”.

He then blasted the ISG in the phased withdrawal of US troops before claiming that he would seriously consider the report as he fired the fatal shot, snarling, “Seriously consider this, asshole!”

To add to the tragedy, caught up in the crossfire was a small British poodle - "Tony Blair of 10 Downing Street" according to the tag on its collar - which had run to join the ISG members.

President Bush addressed the nation last night, condemning the brutal assassination of the ISG, which he blamed on al-Qaida insurgents, and calling for the immediate invasion of their headquarters in Antarctica, but definitely not North Korea or Iran or anywhere else with nuclear weapons.

The Iraq Study Group will be buried beneath the Joint Chiefs of Staff military report into the situation in Iraq. It is survived by civil war and the George W Bush Bible Study Group.

Freedom c.100,000BC-2006AD

A fun-loving child of the swinging one-hundred- thousand-BCies, Freedom was always known for her liberating, devil-may-care attitude and easygoing views on everything from drugs to sexual morality. Often caricatured as something of a hippie by her opponents, beneath her happy-go-lucky persona there lay a resolute fighter for liberty and a believer in the inalienable rights of each and every being. From her time hanging around with the notorious hairy hominid group "Homo Sapiens" to today, Freedom always campaigned for the downtrodden, beginning in her youth with such simple campaigns as for the right to pick fleas off one's mate (a right still enjoyed today by many Glastonbury Festival-goers).

Far bigger things were ahead. By the second millennium BC, Freedom was encouraging the Israelites to say goodbye to "the Man" ("the Man" being, in fact, "the Pharaoh") and "find themselves" by going on a walkabout amid the dunes and deserts of the Middle East. Only two millennia later she was staging her next major "happening", persuading young Goths and Vandals from all over Europe to come to Rome to hold a sit-in and "express themselves" ... something that they succeeded in doing with great gusto and pretty much all over the place.

In the centuries that followed, Freedom wandered across the globe, "fighting the power" wherever it could be found. By the latter part of the eighteenth century she was to be found dancing the night away with the likes of Thomas Paine and the heroes of the American War of Independence. During this time she also fell in with a group of French exchange students, going off with them to Paris to hold a mindblowing (or, more precisely, head chopping) Revolution. Not long after she was wigging out with newly-freed slaves before going on to explore her womanhood with the aid of suffragettes (and later Mars bars) before ignoring her advancing years to don a pink cowboy hat and chaps (and very little else) to march for gay rights.

Such a controversial lifestyle could not help but to attract enemies. Over the years Freedom found herself assailed from both left and right and by powers temporal and spiritual ... all of whom wanted to have as much freedom as possible for themselves (often including the freedoms to amass vast luxury for themselves, to oppress anyone they didn't like at all and, strangely enough, to sleep with any member of the animal kingdom they chose) while denying it to everybody else. Despite their attacks, Freedom carried on untroubled.

While Freedom managed to come through her wild life unscathed, not all of her friends were so lucky. Many of her oldest friends began to show increasing signs of paranoia, perhaps due to the bitter experiences of centuries fighting oppression, perhaps due to a massive intake of alcohol and cocaine in their youth. Several developed an obsession with ensuring Freedom's safety. Fearful that she might be attacked by "evildoers", and despite the protests of Freedom herself, they insisted that she leave her home on fewer and fewer occasions and then only with an armed escort. Eventually, those who claimed to be her closest companions confined her to her room, where they kept her under constant surveillance by CCTV. Deprived of the liberty she always craved, Freedom began to drift away.

Freedom will be buried this weekend. She is survived by her complete biometric data, surveillance files and CCTV footage, which will remain on a centralised database for all eternity.

The Saddam Trial 2005-2006

As A Dodo can today confirm the final closure of the world-famous West End (of Baghdad) farce, The Saddam Trial. The hilarious black comedy that has alternately appalled and enthralled people in Iraq and across the globe has been forced to end following the death of its leading man, which is expected in about 30 days.

The Saddam Trial opened on 19th October 2005 and closed yesterday. It was based on the old folk tale of a young, power-crazed lad with a song on his lips and murderous intent in his heart who sells his soul to the Devil and Donald Rumsfeld. Elevated to the dictatorship of his country, he is fêted by all about him for his courage, wit and tendency to torture / maim / gas / otherwise dispose of those who choose not to fête him. Then comes the tragic day when he chooses to turn against his former friends and paymasters and starts fooling around with crazy schemes to take over the world with giant superguns and chemical weapons. Eventually his fate is sealed when, in a fit of hubris, he refuses to tell United Nations Weapons Inspectors that in truth he has no Weapons of Mass Destruction, having spent his whole WMD budget on gold taps and bad art for his many palaces. His country is invaded and he is swept from power by the United States of America which - in an extraordinary comic twist - gives up its habit of wiping out democratic leaders and propping up dictators and tries wiping out dictators and propping up democrats instead, with hilarious results.

None who had the privilege to witness it will ever forget The Saddam Trial. It's highlights - among them the Byzantine plot, the constant coming and going (usually in a hail of bullets) of cast members, the fabulous supporting work of the US Armed Forces - were too many to mention but if one thing is to be singled out it is the Godot-esque dialogue, such as this exchange between our hero and the judge ...

[Judge] Mr Saddam, we want your identity. Full name, please...

[Saddam Hussein] First of all, who are you? What are you? I want to know who you are. Are you judges?.. I have been here in this building... from eight in the morning.

[Judge] Please sit down, Mr Saddam. Later. We'll get down the identities of the others, and later we'll start with you.

[Saddam Hussein] And from nine A.M. I've been dressed.

[Judge] Well, now so you can sit down and relax, give your identity and make yourself comfortable.

[Saddam Hussein] You know me... I do not tire.

Judge: These are official matters, we have to hear from you your identity. These are formalities, so please.

[Saddam Hussein] I don't have anything against any of you. But adhering to the truth and respecting the will of the great Iraqi people in choosing me, I say: I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq.

[Judge] These matters can be put off until later. This is not the place.

Saddam Hussein: Neither do I recognise the body that has designated and authorised you, nor the aggression. All that is built on a false basis is false.

Surely Beckett could never have done better!

The Saddam Trial's funeral will be held in Baghdad in a ceremony involving gunfire, explosions and a joyful outburst of internecine warfare. It is survived by chaos in the Middle East.

The Veil 1300BC-2006

People across the globe will be shocked to learn today of the death of The Veil, which passed away this morning after a series of violent assaults by a selection of government politicians and the British press, led by Jack "Do You Mind Undressing For Me, Love?" Straw.

Though always rather vague about its age, the Veil is believed to have been born some time prior to 1300 BC, when - according to ancient Assyrian gossip columnists - it spent most of its days enjoying face time with noblewomen and most of its night-times hanging around with commoners and courtesans, a practice later to be taken up enthusiastically by British MPs and Premiership footballers.

After several centuries of such debauched behaviour, The Veil eventually decided to reform its ways following a serious of religious experiences. As many of these experiences involved deeply repressed religious men of senior years, The Veil took it upon itself to protect the world from the dreadful nubility of women, covering up their heads and faces lest they viciously inflame the hearts of deeply repressed religious men of senior years - who might happen to be, say, hanging around in alleyways or up ladders outside the women's houses desperate for a glimpse of nose or eyebrow.

Thanks to the sterling work of a range of deeply repressed religious men of senior years, within just a few centuries The Veil became common throughout the Middle East and Europe. Sadly its plans were to backfire, with its mere presence often serving merely to increase the erotic charge in any situation, something The Veil did little to help by going back to its old habits of appearing with erotic dancers and attractive young widows, as well as spending huge amounts of cash on really good eyeliner and mascara. Such mixed messages were ultimately to lead to tragedy, with a generation of teenage boys developing a permanent sexual fixation on Terry Jones after watching Monty Python's Life of Brian.

As the years passed and deeply repressed religious men of senior years began to lose their influence, The Veil started to fall from favour and from faces across Europe and many parts of the Middle East. Soon The Veil found itself increasingly ostracized. Lonely and unloved, it eventually became prey to attacks by unruly gangs, including "The Sun Boys", "The Express Crew" and "The Daily Mail Fear Squad". The incident that was to bring about its ultimate end came last week when it was grabbed by notorious Jack "The Cabinet Minister" Straw and used to bludgeon several fellow gang members in his attempt to win the Deputy Leadership of the group.

The Veil leaves behind many deeply repressed religious men of senior years, hundreds of concerned makers of bridal wear and a lot of very confused liberals.