The Da Vinci Code Litigation 2006-2007

In what is - extraordinarily - our third update of the day, we at As A Dodo present an obituary for The Da Vinci Code Litigation, which recently passed away. Sadly, it would appear that our reporter on the scene was so affected by what he saw that he has absorbed more than a little of the Da Vinci Code style. Please forgive us.

Renowned conspiracy theorists, 59-year-old Michael Baigent and 64-year-old Richard Leigh staggered through the neo-gothic archway of the Victorian Royal Courts of Justice yesterday. They lunged for the nearest reporter they could see, a representative of As A Dodo. Grabbing my gannex mac forcefully they told me a grim tale of dark conspiracy, of the death of their beloved Da Vinci Code Litigation at the hands of a secret society and of vast amounts of publicity for "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail". In the crisp air of a March afternoon in London they told me The Truth.

Now at last I can reveal The Truth about The Da Vinci Code Legislation to the global world.

It is time.

The Da Vinci Code Litigation was born in 2006. It was the child of two men, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh and of the billions of dollars made by dashing, cardigan-wearing author Dan Brown. Together Baigent and Leigh had built up one of the greatest conspiracy theories ever known, a theory that could make them millions. They were shaken by the dreadful knowledge. All they had to do was claim Jesus Christ had married Mary Magdalene and had children, that their descendants married into the ancient line of ancient French Kings, the Merovingians, and that a secret society planned one day to restore them to the French throne of France. They knew they could do it. They wouldn't even need any evidence. People are stupid.

The plan was brilliant. The pair published a book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. People believed it. But now the plan was under threat. The threat came from the sinister figure of sinister Dan Brown, who beneath his dark jacket, dark turtleneck sweater and light chinos was a secret member of the Society of Authors. Brown saw the genius of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. He knew he had to act. He spent hours in dark corners of the hallowed halls of his local Barnes and Noble bookstore, reading through the book. With a trembling hand he noted down the book's ideas in his leather-bound notebook. Now they were his.

Leigh and Baigent blanched white when they saw the product of Brown's work: The Da Vinci Code. They ripped it furiously from the shelves, flipping rapidly through its pages with white-knuckled hands. In it they saw all their ideas. They even saw themselves, cunningly disguised in a codex of extreme cunningness, as Sir Leigh Teabing. Their plan had been exposed to the world. And now it was making millions.

Swiftly Leigh and Baigent set out quickly for revenge. They ran speedily to the murky halls of the Royal Courts of Justice. They were met by three men, their thinning hair covered by horsehair wigs, their aged bodies covered by blood red robes. One of the men stepped forward.

"Mr Leigh, Mr Baigent", he said, chillingly close, "You have no case - these crazy ideas of yours are far too general to provide the basis for litigation"

Leigh and Baigent turned to each other. How could these men have known? There was only one answer: these "judges" must have been members of the Society of Authors too. As they looked behind the men in front of them, towards the part of the Royal Courts of Justice that was named the Bear Garden by Queen Victoria in 1882, Leigh and Baigent saw before them the sight they dreaded. On the floor lay their precious litigation, strangled to death. They fled.

The quest for The Da Vinci Code Litigation is the quest to kneel before the bones of Leigh and Baigent's hopes of millions, to kneel before the hopes of the outcast ones and weep. Now it is over, ended in the ancient Royal Courts of Justice on a floor on which Romans might once have trod if it had been built before 1882.

The As A Dodo editors add: The Da Vinci Code Litigation will be buried under massive legal bills. It is survived by ludicrous conspiracy theories, the works of Dan Brown and millions of people who wouldn't know a decent book if it bit them on the arse.