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.

Winnie the Pooh 1925-2007

Following the release of Liverpudlian teacher/agent of Western corruption intent on destroying Islam^* Gillian Gibbons from imprisonment in Sudan, As A Dodo has discovered tragic evidence of the fate of the bear at the centre of the row, in a series of documents sent to us by a Mr BB Milne.

Piglet was walking through Hundred Acre Wood when he spotted his good friend the bear hiding behind a bush.

"Hello Mo...," began Piglet.

"Shhh," said his friend, urgently, "Don't mention my name, Piglet"

"But why ever not, Moham... ?" Piglet started to reply before being shushed into silence by a large and furry paw.

"It's not safe to say it, Piglet, that's why. It could get you into all sorts of trouble. Just call me 'X'."

"Alright ... 'X'." said Piglet, "But why? And why are you hiding behind that bush?"

X's round face emerged slowly from among the branches. "Oh Piglet," he sighed, "I should never have agreed to let that nice Mrs Gibbons change my name to Mo... to my new name".

"Ah," said Piglet, sounding suddenly very wise, "I did try to warn you that your assuming the name of the Prophet could easily be used by local extremists to whip up anti-Western sentiment and by their friends in the Sudanese government to try to distract from the attempted genocide in Darfur"

Pooh examined his friend in surprise. "Did you really, Piglet?" He asked.

"Oh yes Mo... I mean, 'X'. Only you weren't listening," replied Piglet.

"I remember now," X said, "I was distracted on account of pretending to be a cloud and trying to ignore Eeyore who was complaining how I'd changed since selling out to the Disney Corporation".

"That's right," replied Piglet, who was very proud of how wise he had been and not very happy that his old friend had ignored him.

"Anyway," continued 'X', "That's why I'm hiding. They locked Mrs Gibbons up, you know."

"Did they now?" Piglet responded.

"Yes," said X, who had come out from behind his bush and was now trying to bury himself in a pile of leaves, "Some of them even threatened to kill her."

"Gosh," said Piglet.

"And that's why I'm hiding," said the bear formerly known as Pooh as he slumped down into a sad heap among the leaves. "Now I think about it, I realise I should never have changed my name from Winnie".

Piglet looked at the sorrowful bear, feeling a sudden anger rising inside him. "What was that you said, 'X'?" he asked, his little eyes flashing red.

X looked at him. "I said, 'I should never have changed my name from Winnie'".

Piglet stared back. "That's what I thought you said, X. Take the nickname of Britain's great wartime leader in vain would you?" he shouted. And as he yelled at his friend he stabbed him repeatedly, casting bits of stuffing across the wood, before throwing him into a large Heffalump trap.

What is left of the bear currently known as 'X' will be buried inside a large pot labelled "Hunny" in the middle of Hundred Acre Wood. He is survived by Rupert the Bear, Barnaby the Bear, Paddington Bear and the Three Bears but definitely not by Mo...well you know who we mean... the Bear.

^* delete according to preference.

Reincarnation, Time Immemorial - AD 2007

As A Dodo can confirm that Reincarnation has died and not passed on to a better place, and most certainly isn't coming back as a worm, a lottery-winner or a cute ginger cat called Mr Fluffykins, following the news that the Dalai Lama has decided to end the 600-year-old Buddhist tradition of selecting his successor by a series of spiritual tests and replaced it with a ballot of monks across the Himalayas and Mongolia.

Reincarnation was first recorded in the Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads, around 800 BC and quickly became popular with Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and anyone else keen to escape a life of grinding poverty by dropping dead and returning a few rungs up the social ladder, or eager to see the utter git who kept lording it over them come back as a slug.

Meanwhile, when they were not pitting tortoises against hares in metaphysical races or eyeing up the pool boy, the Ancient Greeks were also busy pondering the subject. Even that great thinker Socrates said he was "confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead" - a concept much discussed over subsequent millenia and only recently proved with Tony Blair's escape from his scandal-plagued government without a scratch.

Over in the Middle East, Reincarnation was also proving popular with Judaism, with some rabbis giving each soul three chances to make it in the world - a belief the truth of which many believe is evidenced by the careers of Peter Mandelson and Noel Edmonds. With the arrival of David Blaine-wannabe, Jesus of Nazareth, the coming-back-after-your-death-thing really took off. (Although Jesus blew it when, after being taken down from the cross and banged up in a cave for three days, he came back as himself rather than anything more exotic - we have it on good authority, for instance, that Judas wanted to come back as "a bird ... maybe a nightingale ... or even a heron")

Later many Britons (particularly peasants) would dream of a quick release from a hard life and the chance to enter the spiritual lottery that was Reincarnation, though there was very little proof to substantiate the theory other than the occasional pig that bore a passing resemblance to Cardinal Wolsey or a sideboard that, in a certain light, looked just like Anne of Cleves. Indeed, by modern times thousands of people were claiming to have lived previous lives as Joan of Arc or Julius Caesar (but somehow hardly ever as Ned the manure-carrier or Wat the turnip-minder)

Not satisfied with the mere transference of a gone-before soul to a new-found body, Reincarnation did exactly what it said on the tin and reinvented itself. Concepts that were thought to be long-dead, such as putting innocent people in jail and throwing away the key, were resurrected under the new guise of the "war on terror", nations that were thought to have faded from power and influence, such as Russia, began to flex their muscles in London sushi bars and, astonishingly, the British Conservative Party saw itself reincarnated as a group of people who actually could organise a piss-up in a brewery ... though not necessarily a very enjoyable one

The move away from spiritual reinvention to cynical old re-treads left Reincarnation a shadow of its former self, forcing it to admit that it had little hope of coming back as something more profoundly meaningful to the modern mind than belief in the rejuvenating powers of plastic surgery, a big lottery win or a much younger girlfriend. With even the Dalai Lama suggesting that a form of election might be a better way to find a leader than seeing if that kid in the corner liked to play with the old Dalai Lama's walking stick, it was plain that the wheel of life had become wonky and worn bald. Reincarnation gave up the ghost for the last time and headed off to permanent retirement in Nirvana.

Reincarnation will be buried at the Status Quo Church of the Just One More Farewell Tour. It will be cremated and sealed in a lead-lined casket before being encased in cement - just in case it tries to come back as something else.

The Truth c. Time Immemorial-AD2007

The Truth, that nebulous concept that has exercised the minds of everyone from the greatest philosophers to the lowliest politicians⁽¹⁾, has passed away – crushed under an endless succession of fake phone-ins, cheating teachers, sexed-up dossiers, re-edited documentaries, alternative therapeutic nonsense, political spin, ridiculous advertising claims, dodgy journalism and wholly unreliable obituaries.

The Truth was a controversial concept from the moment it first cleared its throat and proclaimed itself a necessity of human interaction, an asseveration which was challenged in around 100,000BC by Ug the Estate Agent - who felt it could do real harm to his offers of centrally-heated caves with a wonderful view of the dormant (‘no, really’) volcano - and has been under continual challenge by his descendants ever since.

It was not long before the formerly-simple Truth came to be regarded as a complex and heavily-nuanced thing. Even as Aristotle stood up to announce that ‘To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true’ other philosophers were gathering round him to "spin" his simple statement into something so complex it would require several hundred more years of reasonably-well-paid philosophising to explain.

Despite such difficulties, The Truth soon became extremely popular. Among its early fans were many religious groups, all of which claimed to have direct access to The Truth, which turned out to be available in manifold, mutually-incompatible forms. Indeed, so keen on The Truth were its religious devotees that many of them proved willing to die for The Truth or - even better - cause other people to die for The Truth, preferably by being roasted over a stake for witchcraft, stoned to death for adultery or blown into thousands of pieces thanks to a disturbed teenager's desire to become a martyr and cop off with 72 virgins.

Scientists, meanwhile, were also industrious in their pursuit of The Truth – happily disabusing us of the notion that the Sun revolved around the Earth or that apples floated upwards, and questioning religion’s view that the Big Bang was just God hitting himself on the thumb with a hammer and that the Earth and its creatures were created in both of the two mutually incompatible ways set out in the Bible at the same time. During the 20th Century the popularity of The Truth was to become even greater with some scientists after they discovered that if you came up with the right sort of Truth you could become extremely sought after... and very well paid. Soon several scientists were happily proclaiming all sorts of Truth, such as the non-existence of global warming to the existence of "Intelligent Design", via the remarkable rejuvenating powers of extremely expensive cold-cream to the validity of homoeopathy.

Followers of the Arts too had become enamoured of the truth, with the great poet Keats claiming that all one needs to know on earth is that ‘beauty is truth, and truth beauty’ (an argument which impressed many of his friends and followers but has still failed to fool even the most indulgent examiner come GCSE time). Great authors sought to illustrate profound Truths by their fictions, with writers such as Jeffrey Archer skilfully proving how much truer fiction can be than reality. Great composers sought to touch on truth in their music, with the works of such as JS Bach capable of uniting all humanity by their beauty ... and the work of such as James Blunt capable of uniting all humanity in a desire to tear their own ears off.

By the 20th Century the Truth, truth be told, was in a poor state. We were promised the war to end all wars, peace in our time and told that we had never had it so good - yet all turned out to be false. We were promised that chocolate bars would help us work rest and play but just got fat, we were promised mascara could make our lashes more beautiful by digitally enhanced actresses wearing falsies, we were promised endless channels of quality entertainment and got repeats of old Star Trek Voyager episodes on Sky One. Even our parents, it turned out, had been lying to us: Father Christmas smelled of dad’s whisky, the Tooth Fairy kept a surprisingly good eye on the level of inflation for an inhabitant of Fairieland and that man you saw mum kissing wasn't really your uncle after all.

The Truth became a mere commodity to be bought and sold on the open market, preferably as a completely made up kiss-and-tell story "ghosted" by a tabloid hack for a low-achieving teenager with bleached hair, a fake tan and artificial boobs.

Finally it could stagger on no longer. Attacked by everyone and everything from the Controller of BBC1 to the woman from Russia who emails you every day promising ‘sexy good time’, The Truth shrugged its shoulders, took a job in advertising and was no more.

The Truth will be A) buried at St Jeffrey Archer’s Church of the Blessed Perjuror; B) cremated at the National Rail Enquiries Cathedral of the 'No, That's The Cheapest Ticket I Can Find, Honest'; or C) terminated before the phone lines have closed at the Chapel of St Richard and St Judy. Calls will cost £1.50 a minute and your integrity may be at risk if the caller is a member of your own production team.

⁽¹⁾ not to mention builders preparing estimates and couples arguing about whose turn it was to put the cat out.

Those Who Knew Them: Shambo the Bull 2001-2007

Following the removal for slaughter of Shambo the Sacred Bull from the Skanda Vale temple in Wales, his close friend and neighbour, Megan the Goat, pays a moving tribute.

Well when I first heard it I couldn’t believe it, isn't it? My dear friend Shambo dead – taken away like a lamb to slaughter, except he’s a bull. And not just any old bull but a scared… sorry, my mistake, not easy to type with cloven hooves… sacred bull – well I suppose it’s the same thing in his case, poor bugger.

I first met Shambo back in 2001. I have to say I wasn’t that impressed at first. What was he for? He wasn’t tupping every heifer in sight, he wasn’t being fattened up for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, he wasn’t even being allowed to roam the fields to gore English ramblers… No, he was being worshipped… I couldn’t believe it… I hadn’t seen anyone down on their knees worshipping farm animals since, well, those English ramblers wandered ‘accidentally’ into the sheep pen.

Admittedly we didn’t get off to a good start – while those monks next door were stretching their holy hands out to the chosen one, I had Dafydd Williams hairy hands tugging at my udders twice a day. So I wasn’t best pleased every time I popped my head over the wall and saw Shambo surrounded by more devotees than Tom Jones at a knicker factory.

But slowly I got to know him. As I was trotting up to the good grazing on top of the hill I’d always pop my head over the wall and say, ‘Bore Da’. He didn’t say much but he was a good listener. We’d chat about the weather – ‘rain again!’ – or discuss the dumbing down of The Archers, but we steered clear of politics and religion. Well, I’m chapel, see and, well, he was a god – like JPR Williams but not as fast down the left flank.

Anyway, it didn’t take long to find out that beneath all that high and mighty godliness he was just a down-to-earth ordinary bull who liked to share a joke – normally I’d ask him, ‘Is there a God?’ and he’d answer, ‘Yes, me!’ …Cracks me up, it does still… Lovely guy, great sense of humour.

Of course, as a Hindu he believed in the cycle of life and that his karma was to be reincarnated… whereas I’ll probably come back as a handbag or fake chamois leather sold for tuppence in Swansea market. He taught me a bit of Sanskrit like ‘What is found here, may be found elsewhere. What is not found here, will not be found elsewhere’… I thought he was taking about the endless bloody rain… And I’d teach him some Welsh words for ‘telephone’⁽¹⁾, ‘ambulance’⁽²⁾, ‘rain’⁽³⁾ of course, and ‘Look out, the English ramblers are back!⁽⁴⁾’

Then in April everything changed when Shambo was diagnosed with bovine TB. I mean, I know he was coughing and had the sniffles, but who wouldn’t with all that rain? The monks and nuns at the temple argued that he was a sacred cow but say that in Wales and it's usually just a cue for a gag about Margaret Thatcher.

Defra, the Welsh Assembly, The Appeal Court… they all refused to listen. They didn’t give a monkey’s that he was a sacred beast. Maybe he did have TB but there’s all kinds of ailments down here at the moment. Boris the duck – he’s got pneumonia, and Julie the donkey has bird flu… but schtum… we weren’t going to tell the man from Defra that.

Suddenly there were people from all over the world flocking to see Shambo and signing a petition on the internet. But to the end he remained calm and serene – not easy when you’ve got hundreds of monks - and quite a few out-and-out nutters - singing hymns, banging tambourines and chanting and praying round you morning noon and night. Sometimes he’d look at me and I knew what he was thinking – ‘God, I wish I could just slip away for a quiet pint’.

And then yesterday, the man from the ministry came back with 20 coppers and four riot vans – it was like a night out with Charlotte Church – and poor Shambo was led away… But do you know what the last thing he said to me was…? He had such a calm nature… He said, ‘Don’t worry, girl, I’ll see you next week… Who knows I may come back as a goat… But here’s hoping I don’t come back as a sheep…’ Cracked me up it did… God bless, Shambo and Nos da…

So, there it is, Shambo is dead. I can’t believe it. I’ve cried so much that I’ve started coughing and sniffling a lot… but I’m going to keep it quiet because I don’t want that vet putting his cold hand up where the sun don’t shine…

⁽¹⁾ 'telefon'
⁽²⁾ 'ambiwlans'
⁽³⁾ 'glaw' - see, caught you out with that one, isn't it?
⁽⁴⁾ 'oh bugger'.

The Veil of St Veronica c.33-2007

Members of the Catholic church, along with the veil-sellers of Abruzzo, are today mourning the passing of St Veronica's Veil, following the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to remove any reference to it from the Stations of the Cross.

The tale of St Veronica's Veil begins in the 6th century AD, at a time when churches across Europe were all letting it be known that they were stuffed to the rafters with holy relics, which they would be more than happy to allow pilgrims to gawp at or fondle for the price of a small, "well, I say small but, let's not beat about the bush, we're talking about improving the chances of avoiding your soul's eternal confinement in the lowest pits of Hell here" donation to the Church restoration fund.

It was surely a happy coincidence that at exactly this time the tale of St Veronica, a pious woman of Jerusalem in 33AD who wiped the face of Jesus with a cloth as he struggled under the weight of the cross, instantly imprinting a perfect image of Jesus's face upon the cloth ("only three groats a touch, keep the queue moving please"), arose.

The tale of the Veil soon spread throughout Christendom. By now hundreds were willing to asseverate that Veronica had travelled to Rome and used her Veil to heal the ailing Emperor Tiberius (a particularly miraculous event given the fact the Emperor was living on Capri at the time). Veronica's Miraculous Veil was now said to be able to quench thirst, restore sight and even resurrect the dead, though unlike Jamie's Magic Torch it was unable to create a magical helter skelter allowing one to go "over and over, faster and faster to Wonderland".

By the early 8th Century the shroud was so popular that it was given its own Chapel at old Saint Peter's in Rome by Pope John VII. For centuries it moved about Rome (presumably with human aid but who can tell with miraculous objects) until it was brought to Saint Peter's in 1297 by order of Pope Boniface VIII, who was outraged that the Chief site of the Western Church should be facing competition in the relic stakes from several hundred saints bones, enough splinters from the one true cross to build a fleet of ships and all three "one true" holy grails.

During reconstruction work on the basilica in 1506 the Veil disappeared, causing outrage in the Vatican and ensuring the Pope would never use that firm of cowboy builders ever again, however low their quote for the work be. Happily there were on hand many artists with an amazingly exact memory of the appearance of the Veil, all of whom were willing to make copies of it for the Church to sell. Unfortunately the industry reproductions of the Veil for the use of sincere pilgrims soon got out of hand, with so many copies being made that by 1616 Pope Urban V was forced to ban the practice altogether ... unless made by a canon of St Peter's Basilica, of course.

For centuries, the whereabouts of the miraculous Veil remained in question. In 1999, however, Father Heinrich Pfeffer announced that he had rediscovered it in a Capuchin monastery in Manoppello in Italy. All who saw the image were immediately struck by its miraculous nature - particularly as none had expected the true image of their Lord to look so exactly like a bog-standard Mediaeval forgery. Even more miraculous was the fact that St Peter's in Rome, Jaen and Alicante in Spain and the basilica of Sacré Coeur in Paris all claimed that they had the one true version of the Veil locked up in their own churches. Indeed, Pope Benedict was so moved by the sight of the Manopello Veil in 2006 that he went off straight away to have its role in the commemoration in the sixth station of the cross expunged as part of a move to remove the apocrypha from the "authentic" story of the Gospels.

The Veil of St Veronica was buried on Good Friday. It is survived by a new set of Stations of the Cross stripped of their Mediaeval traditions, a modernising Pope who speaks in Latin and thousands of distraught sellers of genuine reproduction Veils of St Veronica (guaranteed 100% natural rayon).

Free Will c.450BC-2007AD

As A Dodo has no choice but to report the passing of Free Will, which - after many years of illness - has been ordered into eternity by a team of neuroscientists from Germany, London and Oxford.

Free Will was born in the philosophical schools of ancient Greece in about 450BC when, following Socrates's conclusion that "the good - being identical with the true - imposes itself irresistibly on the will as on the intellect when distinctly apprehended and that every man necessarily wills his greatest good, and his actions are merely means to this end", one of his students punched him in the face for being a dreadful old bore.

Free Will was an unpopular child – frequently getting into fights with philosophers who felt their decision to gang up on Free Will and attempt to beat it to a pulp were all preordained by bearded men on Mount Olympus given to chucking thunderbolts about and changing into swans and bulls to ravish young maidens. Later on it would grow up be an unpopular adult, frequently getting into fights with Logical, Biological and Theological determinists who thought their decision to gang up on Free Will was preordained by past events, the contents of their genes or a bearded man in the sky with a strange resemblance to Dr Rowan Williams.

After two millennia of hard knocks, and a succession of increasingly repressive British Home Secretaries, Free Will first began to complain of feeling unwell when millions of Britons felt compelled to vote New Labour into power in 1997, while in 2000 millions of Americans thought they were voting the Democrats into power but were told otherwise by Jeb Bush and Fox News. Free Will continued about its business but its health was repeatedly called into question after a rapid series of heavy blows including speed cameras, CCTV, biometric passports, DNA testing, ASBOs, 28-day detention without trial and the continuing success of the musicals of Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

The final blow for Free Will came when it was revealed that neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, with colleagues from University College London and Oxford University, had developed a new technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and predict their intentions before they act. On making the discovery they immediately informed Free Will, which promptly did as it was told and died.

Free Will has asked to be cremated in a secular service but will instead be held for 28 days before being buried at St John the Reid’s Church of Thoughtcrime. It is survived by the National Lottery.

The English Counter-Reformation 2006-2007

Political historians have today confirmed the death of the English Counter-Reformation, the attempt by a devout group led by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Secretary of State for Communities Ruth Kelly and Prime Minister Tony Blair to overturn more than 300 years of the English state not being told what to do by the Church.

It was in the summer of 2006 that the desperate band, inspired by such martyrs as Sir Thomas "throw another heretic on the barbie" More and Guy "not the political blogger" Fawkes, not to mention the religious teachings of the 43rd President of the United States, the blessed George W of Bush, first hatched an audacious plan to suborn the will of Parliament to anybody who could claim they received direct instructions from (a) a higher being and/or (b) the aforementioned Mr Bush.

It is understood that the group first began meeting in secret in the middle of 2006, when - along with a large number of faith leaders from across the country - they hatched plans to overcome the will of Parliament by forcing the abandonment of the Faith School Quotas scheme. It was the startling success of this project that led the group to plot their most audacious coup yet - blowing up the provisions of the Equality Act 2006 with regard to adoption of children by homosexual couples on the grounds that the idea of placing children in the care of loving couples of the same sex was abhorrent to God, whereas heterosexual couples who occasionally play "hide the sausage" in the wrong bit of the bun are just indulging in a little forgivable experimentation.

In January 2007, as their plan to blow up the Equality Act 2006 neared completion, the plotters were joined by no less a figure than the Archbishop of Canterbury who, despite having argued that it is "imperative to give the strongest support to the defence of homosexual people against violence, bigotry and legal disadvantage" still held it more important to support the view of anybody who espoused a faith, however medieval, than his own moral beliefs. Soon the Archbishop was supporting the rebels' stance in public and in private allowing them a secret meeting place inside his beard.

It was only this week that the Counter-Reformers were apprehended whilst trying to to sneak a number of explosive crucifixes into the cellars of the Houses of Parliament. Though the Archbishop and Cardinal are expected to be allowed to go free as a mark of respect for their offices, Messrs Kelly and Blair will be publicly hanged, drawn and quartered by their party colleagues.

The English Counter Reformation 2006-2007 is survived by the Equality Act 2006 and the tattered remnants of Tony Blair's leadership of the Government.

Faith School Quotas 2006-2006

Many will be saddened to hear of the death of Faith School Quotas, killed whilst travelling in a government vehicle last night.

Born in the early part of 2006, throughout its short life Faith School Quotas cleaved to a simple creed of religious toleration and understanding, insisting that Faith Schools take up to 25% of their pupils from children of different religious backgrounds or no religious background at all. This creed was based on the, perhaps naive, idea that children whose parents belong to different faith groups should occasionally meet each other and perhaps learn something about each other beyond the fact that they are unbelievers who should be wiped from the face of the Earth by (a) the forces of righteousness, (b) the will of the appropriate God and (c) large amounts of explosives.

Tragically, Faith School Quotas died last night, after the government vehicle it was travelling in was involved in a major accident following the decision of its driver, Education Secretary Alan Johnson, to perform a sudden U-turn which resulted in him driving into a sea of religious intolerance. Police are currently interviewing Mr Johnson who it is believed may have been driving under the influence of the Labour leadership contest at the time of the accident.

The funeral will be held on Monday at St Dawkins Church of Unbelief and will be followed by a ceremony of remembrance in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the Chief Rabbi, several imams and a couple of Hare Krishna followers will dance upon the grave. Representatives of the Church of Scientology will be on hand to take a collection, then donate it to themselves.

Faith School Quotas are survived by ghettos, crusades, jihads and Old Firm football matches in Glasgow.

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.

Limbo 0-2006

Unbaptised souls throughout the crystal spheres are today mourning the loss of their former home, Limbo. The news comes following the decision of Pope Benedict to abolish Limbo on the grounds (a) that the concept of unbaptised children being forever tainted by original sin is inconsistent with a modern interpretation of the gospels and (b) the feelings of bitterness he has held towards the very word limbo ever since that time he tried to shimmy under a low, low pole in his mitre while on a Sandals holiday in Jamaica.

Limbo was a bleak and lonely place on the borders of reality, free from the torments of Hell such as eternal fires, burning sand and double-glazing salesmen but forever excluded from the delights of heaven, such as being surrounded by devout theists for all eternity. Despite this it proved unpopular with visitors, the only tourists to that place of grim non-existence in the last 2,000 years being Jesus, Dante and anyone who has ever sat down in front of Countdown for more than three minutes.

Despite its unprepossessing aspect, for much of its 2,000 year existence Limbo was home to some of the greatest minds to have existed before the birth of Christ. Its inhabitants included some of the world's greatest poets and thinkers, including Homer and Virgil but sadly not Marge, Bart or Lisa or any other members of the Thunderbirds team. While the unbaptised are said to be distraught at saying goodbye to the only home some of them have known for the past two millennia, other residents of Limbo took the news of Limbo's death philosophically - the residents in question being Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Socrates. Zeno in particular was untroubled by the news having proved beyond all possible doubt that Limbo could never be destroyed, just as an arrow could never, philosophically speaking, reach its target ... exactly two minutes before Pope Benedict decided to wipe it out of existence.

Limbo is survived by Purgatory, Hell and watching Adam Sandler movies.

The 21st Century 2001-2006

The population of the Vatican was today mourning the 21st Century, after it was declared dead by Pope Benedict XVI in a brief address from St Peter's Square.

It appears from his His Holiness's speech that, despite being born in a vigorous bout of distrust of modernity brought on by inoculation with the Millennium Bug, the still young century had been showing increasing signs of ill health over the past six years. In particular there was evidence that it had inherited several afflictions from its parents, the 19th and 20th centuries, including freedom of thought, belief in Darwinian Evolution, women's liberation, the unfortunate practice of prosecuting priests who wish to display their affections to young choir boys and a distressing lack of crusades in the Holy Land. The Century having failed to improve despite the finest leechcraft of the Vatican's doctors, the Holy Father eventually found himself with no alternative but to administer the last rites to the century ... whilst also administering a red hot poker to the Century's fundament.

Speaking to an assembled crowd of serfs, freemen, pardoners, clerkes, reeves, apothecaries and villeins, Pope Benedict announced that henceforth the 21st century will be replaced by the ever-reliable 14th century, adding that from now on the Sun will travel around the Earth, the Black Death will be endemic across Europe and the best way of improving Christian-Muslim relations will be at the end of a long and pointy lance. His Holiness's address was greeted by rapturous applause from the crowd, though the effect was somewhat lessened when several of the lepers' arms fell off. Fortunately the festive air was soon restored by the burning of an assortment of witches.

The 21st Century was buried on Saturday morning in a moving ceremony, marred only when Pope Benedict told the assembled relatives that the 21st Century was "evil and inhuman", although officials later explained His Holiness had not meant to cause any offence.