The 2012 British Olympic Spirit 2005-2007

The 2012 British Olympic Spirit was found dead this week in a partially built stadium on Hackney Marshes. Sources close to the Spirit say it had become increasingly worried after the estimated cost for the London Olympics more than trebled from £2.4bn to £9.3bn and have now risen so high that they have been selected for the Pole Vault squad.

The Spirit, the long-awaited offspring of Sebastian Coe and Tessa Jowell, was born amidst much fanfare and hoopla in July 2005 – although the fanfare and hoopla had less to do with the prospect of the nation being afforded an opportunity to display its sporting prowess to the rest of the globe and more to do with pipping the French bid at the post.

While other countries greet the prospect of hosting the Olympics as an occasion for national pride (not to mention a marvellous opportunity to rip off tourists), in ever-cheerful and optimistic Great Britain enthusiasm for the 2012 Olympic Games was, from the sound of the starting pistol, confined to construction firms and property developers gleefully shaking their heads, sucking in air and cackling, “That’s gonna cost you… We should be able to finish that by 2013… But we’ve got another job on down Wembley way…”.

With the Olympic ideal of the finest amateurs competing for nothing more than a crown of laurels and the approbation of their peers having long been replaced by the worst professionals incapable of organising a school sports day without forcing the parents to remortgage their homes and sell their kidneys, the Spirit - never strong - quickly began to wane. Rather than being galvanised into glorious action, across the land Britain's potential medal winners of the future chose instead to slump back in their sofas, turn on Richard and Judy and wonder vaguely if Citius, Altius and Fortius were three of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Attempts to consolidate all its debts into one manageable debt failed to halt the Olympic Spirit's decline. Despite plans to raise capital by introducing sponsored events including the 400m financial hurdles and the Snickers marathon, and London mayor Ken Livingstone’s plans to introduce a congestion charge for cyclists using the Olympic velodrome, the costs continued to spiral. The Spirit fell into a deeper, and deeper depression before, tragically, taking its own life, hanged by a genuine replica plastic Olympic gold medal bearing the legend “I Love the 2012 Olympics” (retail price £29.99).

The 2012 British Olympic Spirit will be buried in a pauper’s grave along with billions of taxpayers cash as construction firms and property developers dance ecstatically in a New Orleans-style celebration of the dead. It is survived by Ken Livingstone, Tessa Jowell and the knowledge that if the French had won they'd have done the whole thing with a lot more class and a lot less whinging.

As A Dodo small print: the cost of your Olympics may go up as well as up, and your home may be at risk if you do not keep up council tax repayments.

The Death of the Cold War 1989-2007

The Death of the Cold War died last night when MPs voted by a majority of 248 to renew Britain's Trident nuclear submarines, thus bringing the country kicking and screaming into the 1950s, prepared at any moment to deter the threat of a massive nuclear attack by the forces of the USSR, the Eastern Bloc and Red China with the prospect of mutually assured destruction, despite the fact that the USSR no longer exists, the Eastern Bloc's forces are already working over here as plumbers and the biggest invasion threat from China is from a large amount of extremely cheap T-shirts.

The Death of the Cold War began in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall which left that once divided city vulnerable to unscrupulous capitalists determined to (literally) smash communism - charging $10 a throw for a piece of grafittied rubble and leaving the city wide open to the horror of an invading army of Pink Floyd fans.

Soon Eastern Bloc countries - sick of suffering under the yoke of communist oppression and the occasional visit by Sir Paul McCartney - were demanding the right to hold their own concerts featuring 70s rock dinosuars, elect democratic governments, eat quarter-pounders with cheese and yearn for the days of communist oppression.

Thanks to the Death a generation raised on a constant diet of Cold War paranoia - including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, When the Wind Blows, Red Dawn and Noel's House Party - breathed a collective sigh of relief as the superpowers stepped back from the brink of nuclear annihilation. At last ordinary citizens could go about their business safe in the knowledge that the man in the park whispering "the red squirrel flies low over the Volga tonight" wasn't a Soviet agent trying to start World War Three but an alternative comedian filming an ironic lager commercial.

All seemed well with the Death of the Cold War until yesterday when, urged on by our Great Leader and his predecessor Comrade Blair, Britain chose to follow the examples of such great nations as Iran and North Korea and commission itself some nuclear weapons to prove to the world that, for all it seems to be a crumbling state unable even to care for the health of its people, it is in truth a powerful player on the global stage. The great leader's success was due in no small part to the work of the official opposition and its leader Comrade Cameron, whose only request was that all the new missiles be fitted with windmills so they can generate gigaWatts of environmentally-friendly electricity as they hurtle towards Minsk at several thousands mile per hour.

The Death of the Cold War will be buried on May Day at Whitehall at a ceremony witnessed by Comrade Brown, who will stand on the newly erected balcony at Ten Downing Street, smile grimly beneath his Homburg, and stiffly salute a march-past of the missiles of the Glorious People's Republic of Britain... before personally executing the 95 Labour rebels who voted against him.

It is survived by the memory of a time when Tony Blair supported CND, the four-minute warning and shooting your irradiated grandmother with a 12-bore to stop her getting her crazed, mutated hands on your last tin of Alphabetti Spaghetti.

Childhood c. Mid-19th Century - 2007

The death of Childhood - which was confirmed yesterday by the publication of the government's new curriculum for the under-fives - cannot truly be counted as unexpected. Under increasing pressure from the joint effects of a society bent on buying girls under ten clothing bearing the logo of US porn magazine Playboy (at the same time as threatening to lynch everyone from paedophiles to paediatricians and podiatrists) and a government bent on cramming the maximum number of exams into the life of everyone under 25, the only cause of wonder is, perhaps, that it managed to survive so long.

While children had existed since time immemorial, the institution of Childhood was only born during the reign of Queen Victoria, when people began to feel that children were not merely handily chimney-sized mini-adults but cherubic innocents, closer to the angels than the adults about them and ideal for being pictured on the cover of any chocolate box.

Freed from the close confines of assorted soot-choked chimney stacks, dark coal mines and machine works, Childhood became for many a time of innocence and play, when the young could learn to experience their world first-hand - whether it be the joys of skipping merrily through a meadow, blowing soap bubbles and fashioning daisy chains or the even greater joys of scrumping apples, burning their dad's shed to the ground while discovering the wonder of matches and making their parents' lives as miserable as possible.

Soon Childhood was everywhere, becoming so popular that a significant proportion of those over retirement age (particularly senior judges) decided to indulge in it a second time. As the decades passed, more and more people began to realise that Childhood really was (contrary to their hopes when they themselves were children) the best time of their lives. Increasingly people well into their twenties, thirties and forties decided to cling onto Childhood (not to mention the childish things that went with it such as Xbox 360s, doll collections and the belief that the Harry Potter books have some literary value).

Soon it became clear that there was not enough Childhood to go around. Parents - urged on by a society eager to turn anyone capable of holding a coin into a consumer, a media eager to push pictures of semi-naked women at tweenies and an internet leaping over itself to insert images of donkey-sex into the minds of anybody it could find - rushed to thrust adulthood upon their offspring just as soon as they could find an ear-piercing salon willing to carry out its work in utero.

The government too became aware of the shortage of Childhood and, over the years from 1997, worked steadily to cut it down, loading everyone under twenty with so many standard assessment tests, GCSE exams, GNVQ exams, AS-level exams, A-level exams et al that the only way that anyone could find time to trip merrily was to drop some acid on the way to the exam hall.

It was the government's curriculum for the under-fives - a curriculum that will test them on everything from their ability to count their toes to their capacity to programme a computer - that proved Childhood's end, crowding out the last period of time in a child's life not already filled with examinations. Starved of time, freedom and love, Childhood passed away last night.

Childhood will be buried at St Herod's Church. The reading will be the first four words of Mark 10:14 "Suffer the little children".

Sir Edward Elgar 1857-2007

The news of the death of Sir Edward Elgar will come as an enormous shock to all those who loved him, particularly given that he was born in 1857 and was originally believed to have died in 1934.

Famed throughout his first life for such great works as The Enigma Variations - whose Nimrod variation, when played at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday is capable of bringing a tear to the eye of everyone from Telegraph-reading, retired colonels to happy-slapping youths - and the Pomp & Circumstance Marches that gave birth to Land of Hope & Glory, Sir Edward Elgar was one of the greatest British composers. Many believe his music had an uncanny ability to connect with the British people, an ability that was doubtless the product both of his enormous (and self-taught) musical gifts and of the fact that he first started composing in earnest while working as bandmaster at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum. At the time of his original death in 1934 he was the country's best-loved composer and Master of the King's Musick.

Left to rest peacefully in his grave for more than 65 years, Sir Edward was only exhumed in 1999, when the authorities at the Royal Mint decided to place him on the face of the £20 note - a position from which he could look down on Charles Darwin and his £10 note and look up to Sir John Houblon and his £50 note, doubtless joining the rest of the public in wondering who the hell Sir John Houblon was and what on earth he had done to rank above one of Britain's greatest composers and one of the world's greatest scientists.

For eight years, Sir Edward did loyal service on the £20 note, whether being slid into wallets, crumpled into pockets, rolled up in the lavatories of media haunts and snorted through or even handed over to politicians in exchange for a "baronetcy for myself and summink nice for the wife". Through all the crumplings up, impromptu origami sessions and even during many dark moments on boil wash in the washing machine while lying forgotten in a back pocket, the aged composer uttered no word of complaint.

Despite such Stakhanovite toil, Sir Edward soon found himself the victim of a whispering campaign in the Mint. He was, it was said, too old-fashioned and easy to copy - a charge which was to prove all too true when it was discovered that his image was spending more time on photocopiers than that fat bloke from accounting's arse did at office parties.

Sir Edward's doom was decreed. In March 2007 he was cast aside by the Royal Mint, to be replaced by the great Scottish economist Adam Smith - the man who first felt the invisible hand of the market (though the matter has yet to be brought to court). Sir Edward will be buried in the graveyard of deceased banknote characters alongside Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale and that dodgy copy of Elizabeth Fry on a five-pound note I got passed with the rest of my change in the pub last night.

Cheap Flights 1985-2007

Cheap Flights reached the end of their short but lucrative runway this weekend following the announcement that the Conservatives plan to introduce a tax on frequent flyers with a green air miles scheme designed to limit damage to the environment - particularly if that environment is anywhere in the vicinity of a hen party with £1.00 tickets to Dublin.

Cheap Flights took off for the first time in 1985 when Ryanair went into competition with British Airway and Aer Lingus, flying from Waterford to London, and providing a much cheaper alternative by economising on "fancy frills" such as customer service and leg room for anyone taller than The Seven Dwarves.

By the early 90s Cheap Flights had become a popular and cost-effective way of enjoying what felt like a near-death experience at a fraction of the cost of Alton Towers. With EU deregulation of the air industry in 1997, the skies over Britain were filled with planes carrying passengers to weekends in such romantic European destinations as Stuttgart, that strange bit of Paris that is actually 50 miles from the city itself and is only used by cheap flights and the crop dusting plane from "North by Northwest" and the Stansted Travelodges that are the only alternative when you've been unexpectedly bumped off a flight despite having booked it several months in advance.

With growing concern over the environmental impact of Cheap Flights during the noughties, the 21st century equivalent of the Battle of Britain began. In the early days of the conflict, Ryanair and EasyJet prevailed, but despite increased demand for short-haul flights (so-called because the passengers were often called upon to haul the plane from the terminal concourse to the runway) environmentally-aware politicians and Conservatives looking for an image change soon began to inflict heavy losses.

The last post was sounded when Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, dared to speak out on behalf of the environment in a brave move to protect our beautiful planet in no way connected with the opportunity to embarrass a Labour government with all the green credentials of Jeremy Clarkson. When David Cameron - who had joined the Mile High club as a teenager despite never having boarded a plane - came flying out of the sun with all environmental policies blazing, Cheap Flights were riddled with holes, took a sudden nose-dive and crashed and burned... something many passengers had been predicting would happen for years.

Cheap Flights will be buried at St Leslie Nielsen's Church of Airplane! Mourners will be flown to East Midlands airport, 120 miles from the service held in the duty-free concourse of Luton Airport. Admission will be £0.50 (inc. wake taxes £75.00), a 100cl bottle of Lithuanian red wine £4.00 and complementary nuts £12.50. Passengers will be asked to join in the singing of Cheap Flights favourite hymn "There is an airport far away".

Cheap flights are survived by unseasonably warm weather, a load of lonely raffia donkeys and a massive increase in day-glo fake tans.

But Not Forgotten: Week Ending 10 March 2007

• Jean Baudrillard 1929-2007 - French philosopher
• Chris Lightfoot 1978-2007 - grassroots web pioneer
• Ian Wooldridge 1932-2007 - leading sports journalist
• Thomas Eagleton 1929-2007 - Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee
• Richard Joseph 1954-2007 - computer games composer, musician and sound specialist

Patrick Mercer's Conservative Front Bench Seat 2003-2007

Conservatives across the country are today singing the blues for the Front Bench Seat of Patrick Mercer MP, which has died at the age of four in what is being reported as an unsavoury racist incident.

Patrick Mercer's Front Bench Seat was the lovechild of former Tory leader, ex-Scots-Guardsman and professional mute Iain Duncan Smith's need for a shadow cabinet member who didn't look as if he belonged in an 18th Century lunatic asylum and former army officer and ex-BBC Defence Reporter Patrick Mercer's desire to find a position where, if he bided his time, he could really shoot his mouth off.

It was a sign of the regard in which Mr Mercer was held that he retained his Front Bench Seat under three successive Conservative leaders - though this may have been due in part to the fact that in recent years the Tories have rarely given their chiefs enough time to put their lucky gonk on the leader's desk, let alone get round to reshuffling their shadow cabinet. Given the high degree of sensitivity and intelligence which has traditionally been displayed by British Army officers (only some of whom like to attend "natives and colonials" parties dressed in Nazi uniform) many were surprised when Mr Mercer failed to say anything outrageous at all for many years, preferring instead to leave foolish generalisations and ill-thought-through off-the-cuff remarks to Boris Johnson.

Mr Mercer's great moment - and his Front Bench Seat's darkest hour - finally came in March 2007 when his mouth took the opportunity of an interview with Times Online to begin channelling the spirit of Ron Atkinson, suggesting that during his time in the army he had come across "a lot of ethnic minority soldiers who were idle and useless, but who used racism as cover for their misdemeanours" and that, in the army, a "chap with red hair" would get a "far harder time than a black man".

From the moment that Conservative leader David Cameron became aware of Mr Mercer's remarks (or at least from the moment he became aware that they'd been made publicly and to a journalist) the death of Mr Mercer's Front Bench Seat was inevitable. Confirming The Seat's passing, friends of Mr Cameron told reporters that to claim he had overreacted was "utter rot" and that in his time as Tory leader he had known "a lot of Conservative MPs who were idle and useless but who used claims of 'political correctness gone mad' as cover for their misdemeanours".

Patrick Mercer's Conservative Front Bench Seat will be buried without ceremony at St Enoch's Church of the Rivers of Blood and as far away from Mr Cameron's shiny New Tory image as the spin doctors can manage.