The Royal Mail's Universal Service 1840-2007

The Last Post has been sounded for The Royal Mail's Universal Service following the news that the Mail was losing 6p on each stamped letter it delivered - and losing most of the cheques, credit cards and birthday money contained in those letters themselves.

The Royal Mail was founded in 1516, the misbegotten offspring of Henry VIII who established a Master of the Posts to ensure that the enormous volume of billet douxs he penned were delivered to the correct girlfriend - sparing him both embarrassment and unnecessary expenditure on Royal Executioners.

The Royal Mail led a privileged and sheltered life - delivering romantic quatrains to mistresses, declarations of war to cousins who ruled enemy powers and notifications of having won a free entry in Ye Olde Readers' Digeste draw to courtiers - until 1653 when it was forced to go public by Charles I. Sadly the king's plans had to be put on hold for several years after his plan to close Parliament was incorrectly delivered to a Mr O Cromwell and it was only under Charles II that the Royal Mail was incorporated into the General Post Office.

Over the following decades The Royal Mail continued about its work as usual, letting neither snow, nor rain, nor Black Death stay its couriers from the slow completion of such appointed rounds as they could be bothered to deal with before bunging any excess post in the nearest handy plague pit or open sewer.

Change was to come in 1840, when The Royal Mail gave birth the The Universal Service with its uniform penny post - allowing urchins, mill-owners and philanthropists alike to send mail to whomsoever they liked as well as, unfortunately, introducing the dreaded hobby, philately.

Despite this The Universal Service became a popular way of delivering letters, parcels and bombs to all and sundry across the nation, until the effects of the global market began to take their toll. In 2000, battered by constant criticism of its high cost and tardy and erroneous deliveries, Royal Mail first tried to escape its poor image by disguising itself under the name Consignia. Within days it was discovered, after thousands of its new brochures bound for potential customers were found dumped in a wheelie-bin behind the sorting office. Forced to confront the ugly truth it reverted to its original name and spent the last few years of its life harried from pillar box to post office by constant jibes about thieving posties and over-priced stamps. In a desperate bid to stop the rot The Royal Mail began to close rural post offices and calculate postage on increasingly-eccentric scales - weight, size, colour of enevelope, popularity of recipient and ferocity of their dog - but to no avail. It was finally licked this week.

The body of The Royal Mail's Universal Service will be parceled up and posted to the Great Sorting Office in the Sky, but will be delivered to a Mr Graham Torting, Skye where it will remain unopened for a number of weeks before being returned to sender... and delivered to Roy & Alma, the Ale House, Cirencester. It is survived by thousands of private courier companies who guarantee next day delivery and modern modes of communication such as email, texting and shouting very loudly.

Humanity's Sense of Superiority c.2,500,000BC-2007AD

The death of Humanity's Sense of Superiority over its fellow creatures will come as a shock to all those who - while troubled by such daily cares as the grind of work, the quest for love or the renewed threats of both nuclear conflict and appearances by Noel Edmonds on TV - were able to console themselves with the knowledge that they were at least brighter than a chimp.

The Sense of Superiority's death comes following the discovery by researchers from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge that Senegalese chimpanzees band together to hunt using hand-crafted (or, rather, hand-and-tooth-crafted) spears - thus proving themselves to possess two of humanity's most highly prized assets: (a) the ability to make use of tools and (b) the ability to get their kicks by running round and killing things.

Humanity's Sense of Superiority was born in around 2,500,000BC when early hominid Australopithecus first discovered how to make simple digging tools from polished stones, thus enabling her to dig further and faster than rivals without endangering her nails, opening up new and exciting manicure possibilities as well as a diet of previously unreachable tubers, thus paving the way for the potato to take over the diet of Western human beings two-and-a-half-billion years later.

The Sense of Superiority was to go from strength to strength when another human ancestor, Homo erectus, discovered how to make use of tools to create fire, either after watching the effects of a lightning strike on the arid African savannah in which he lived or as part of a complex scam involving taking out a million rocks' worth of fire insurance on his home tree . The use of fire immediately put the hominid one-up on all his fellow creatures, enabling him to bask in the glow of his Superiority, not to mention the embers of his former home and a brand new million-rock fortune.

Soon mankind was wandering across the whole globe, feeling smug as he set fire to things and made use of tools which steadily advanced from simple heated cooking stones, through bows and arrows all the way to such modern-day tools as the computer and the BBC weatherman who signs off with "And that's your weather ... for now".

While Humanity's Sense of Superiority initially seemed to survive the potentially fatal discovery that fellow primates were also capable of making use of tools to assist them in achieving their goals, it fell into a steep decline when it realised that, rather than spending its time making computers and watching annoying weathermen, it could have spent the last two million years happily running around chasing things with sticks.

Humanity's Sense of Superiority will be cremated, just as soon as the chimps succeed in working out what to do with the matches. It is survived by Charlton Heston, a half-buried Statue of Liberty and a bunch of damned dirty apes.

But Not Forgotten: Week Ending 24 February 2007

• Dr Robert Adler 1913-2007 - co-inventor of the TV remote
• Derek Waring 1927-2007 - actor
• Ray Evans 1915-2007 - lyricist behind "Que Sera, Sera"
• Maurice Papon 1910-2007 - French cabinet minister and Nazi collaborator

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.

Britney Spears's Hair 1981-2007

Britney Spears's Hair died this weekend after it was forcibly removed from its life support system in a Los Angeles tattoo parlour. It had been unwell for some time as a result of obsessive interest in its every move, flick, wave and tint from people around the world who deemed knowledge of the Hair more important than an understanding of history, science, politics or even themselves.

Britney Spears's Hair was born in 1981 to Britney Spears herself and led a normal and unremarkable life - barring a childish experimentation with Mickey Mouse ears - until 1998 when it found itself propelled against its will into the paparazzi flashlights following the success of Britney's debut album ...Baby One More Time.

Almost overnight the Hair became the most-photographed celebrity in the world, replacing Princess Diana's cleavage and Tony Blair's cheekily self-satisfied grin as the holy grail of snapshots.

Where once the Hair had been able to spend its days sensibly brushed and parted or even matted and hidden under a hat if it so wished, now the hair faced a daily barrage of media speculation about its next reinvention and endless questions about everything from its favourite conditioner to its thoughts on the Middle East peace process.

Despite its astonishing financial success the Hair's behaviour became increasingly erratic as it was hounded from nightclub to wedding chapel to divorce court. In a desperate bid to return to a more simple style, the Hair checked itself into rehab for a quick rinse and blow-dry but checked itself out before completing the treatment, resulting in a tonsorial disaster that pushed the war in Iraq off the front pages.

The damage had been done, and Britney Spears filed for divorce from the Hair citing irreconcilable artistic differences, although she was present as the two parted company and the Hair was finally allowed to rest in peace, beneath the barber's chair, before being swept away for the final time.

Britney Spears's Hair will be buried at the St Samson Church of Non-Denominational Celebrity Hair, Hollywood, in a private service attended by friends, family, minders, paparazzi and hundreds of thousands of distraught fans before the Hair is exhumed by bald acolytes and sold on eBay.

Britney Spears's Hair was predeceased by Ted Danson's thatch and Demi Moore's locks. It is survived by tabloid editors tearing their hair out as they while away the time until they can print the next Britney upskirt crotch shot without more than the usual amount of hypocrisy.

But Not Forgotten: Week Ending 17 February 2007

• Sheridan Morley 1941-2007 - writer, presenter and critic
  
• Steven Pimlott 1953-2007 - theatre director
• Peter Clarke 1948-2007 - Children's Commissioner
• Nicholas Johnson 1947-2007 - ballet dancer
• Ruth Crisp 1918-2007 - crossword compiler