But Not Forgotten: Week Ending 31 March 2007

• Sir Thomas Hetherington 1926-2007 - Director of Public Prosecutions who prosecuted Jeremy Thorpe
• Professor Paul Lauterbur 1929-2007 - Nobel Prize-winning co-inventor of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Faustino Oramas 1911-2007 - 'Buena Vista' songwriter
• Andranik Margaryan 1951-2007 - Prime Minister of Armenia
• Mao Anqing 1923-2007 - son of Mao Tse Tung
• Johnny Booker 1934-2007 - lead singer of The Vipers

Problems c.100,000BC-2007AD

An international panel of scientists has concluded that the last Problem in Great Britain is dead, displaced from its home and outcompeted by its distant cousin from across the Atlantic, the "Challenge".

Archaeological records suggest that the first Problem arose in about 100,000BC - at roughly the same time as Homo sapiens developed the capacity for rational thought - when Ug realised that facing a stampeding mammoth with a bit of tree branch with a piece of flint strapped to the end might not be such a great idea. Ug was rapidly impelled to discover the problem's corollary, namely "the solution" - in this case placing a big pit between himself and the aforementioned stampeding mammoth.

Over the millennia more and more problems were to present themselves to Ug and his successors: physical problems such as hunger, illness, infirmity and the fact that the neighbouring tribe had developed superior pieces of flint to tie to their tree branches and started eyeing up Ug's successors' caves. As the years passed and worries about neighbouring tribes having superior bits of flint turned to ones about neighbouring city-states having pointier bronze swords, so humanity discovered whole new sorts of Problem to worry about, including how to work out the area of a circle, whether the Earth revolved around the Sun or vice versa and how to govern a bunch of people many of whom had armed themselves with incredibly pointy bronze swords. With each Problem, mankind was driven to discover a new solution. Soon it had discovered all sorts of things like the theory of gravity, medicine, hot-and-cold-running-water and nuclear weapons, and was entitled to sit back and feel very happy with itself, although a bit nervous about all those nuclear weapons.

It was in the 1960s that Problems were to meet their rival, as Wall Street marketing men slowly began to realise that people found problems rather awkward and negative and the whole business of having to find solutions to them really rather tiresome. Searching around for an alternative they soon stumbled upon the word "Challenge", a term redolent of acts of bravery and derring-do like climbing Mount Everest and, just like climbing Mount Everest, having an air of being something one didn't have to worry about at all if one didn't really want to.

Soon the Challenges were leaping through the linguistic ecosystem and pushing Problems out of their natural territory. Anywhere men and women could be found who wanted to sugar unpalatable truths or gloss over their own deficiencies, there Challenges could be found. Perhaps unsurprisingly, among those swiftest to cast Problems out of their language were politicians. Soon pupils with learning Problems found themselves liberated from the shackles of ignorance by being redesignated "learning challenged" and those with mobility Problems found themselves leaping from their wheelchairs and zimmer frames, eager to welcome the newly-coined Challenges that injury or Mother Nature had bountifully strewn in their, somewhat erratic and very short, paths.

By the early Noughties Problems had almost died out in all public discourse. Indeed, records indicate that the last politician to have been in possession of an actual Problem was former Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, who was so embarrassed at having had a Problem, in the form of the Falklands War, that he felt compelled to resign. In early 2007, Home Secretary John Reid was proudly confirming that he had dealt with all the Problems in his department by converting them to challenges and within days all his fellow ministers had followed suit, with the whole nation following only weeks later.

Problems, having been conclusively identified as living-challenged, will be buried at the Church of St Judas the Slightly Iffy on Saturday. They are survived by "Challenges", "Small Presentational Issues" and "Downright Lies".

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.

New Labour's Gambling Addiction 1997-2007

Members of the Government were this morning tearing up their scratchcards, throwing away their betting slips and cashing in their chips following the death of their addiction to gambling, which was shot down in its prime last night by a marauding gang of nonagenarians in ermine hoodies.

New Labour's Gambling Addiction was born in 1997, when Gordon Brown happened upon billions of discarded National Lottery scratchcards lodged in the nations coffers and found that, whatever lay behind the silver foil, they all came up as winners for the Treasury. Despite his reputation as a dour son of the manse, the Chancellor was unable to resist the temptation to see whether it was really possible to live the life of a professional gambler. Soon he was discovering gambling income in all sorts of places, whether from the high street bookmakers, the lottery, trackside betting or online poker.

With industry failing and the expansion of the service sector threatened by the inability of the populous to imbibe more than 16 supersize decaf lattecinos per capita a day without committing murder, or worse, releasing a new Robbie Williams CD, Mr Brown became convinced that the only way to bring home the bacon was to don dark glasses, rechristen himself Snake Eyes and tour the gambling dens of Great Britain.

It was not long before the Chancellor had convinced the rest of the Government to follow his lead, though few achieved his success. Peter Mandelson gambled his reputation on the Millennium Dome's success, John Prescott gambled his marriage on not getting caught in flagrante with his secretary and Tony Blair gambled the nation's armed forces on Iraq.

Only Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell seemed to understand the Chancellors lessons. Soon she and the Chancellor were working as a team, he stacking the decks to ensure a substantial tax take, she diverting the National Lottery's income to replace government spending on National Health and the Olympics. So great was Ms Jowell's enthusiasm, indeed, that she set about weaning the whole nation onto the joys of gambling, bringing forward legislation to flood the country with casinos and supercasinos (understood to be just like ordinary casinos but larger and with a strange vulnerability to Kryptonite).

It was Ms Jowell's enthusiasm that was to prove her undoing. One night she was foolish enough to wander through one of Westminster's seedier areas (the Houses of Parliament), her pockets stuffed with the Governmental IOUs she hoped gambling would enable her to pay off. As she neared the door of the House of Lords, however, she was set upon by a large number of Peers either (a) outraged at the Government's plans to revive poverty-stricken areas by licensing casinos to take the last penny of every local inhabitant or (b) acting in the mistaken belief that the IOUs had something to do with loans for peerages. Whatever the case, the result was a fatal assault on the Government's Gambling Addiction.

New Labour's Gambling Addiction will be buried at St Noel's Church of the Deal or No Deal. The ceremony will be conducted by the Reverend John McCririck and the hymn will be number 5-to-3 on, "All Hail ye Little Lottery Balls".

The Home Office 1782-2007: A Correction

Further to our obituary for the Home Office, we at As A Dodo can now confirm that the ancient office of state will be buried today in a ceremony attended by Home Secretary John Reid and thousands of civil servants eager both to remember their former department and to bag a decent desk in the new one.

The Home Office is survived by twin offspring, The Ministry of Truth (responsible for the courts and the treatment of offenders) and the Ministry of Love (responsible for policing, immigration and anti-terrorism measures). The former will be delivered into the hands of Lord Falconer who will doubtless lavish on it all the care he has lavished on the constitution and the separation of powers in his time as Tony Blair's best mate Lord Chancellor, while the latter will remain in the custody of John Reid, and may God have mercy on its soul.

NHS Dentistry 1948-2007

The snaggle-toothed inhabitants of Britain were lining up in the streets outside dentists this morning, following the news that NHS Dentistry has passed away, its jaws clamped shut and its cries of protest muffled, after the publication of a report revealing that two million patients still don’t have access to a dentist under the National Health Service.

NHS Dentistry was born in 1948, the offspring of the post-war Labour government’s dream to offer free dentistry to all and their nightmare of millions of ill-shaped British teeth clamping down on their chip-butties for eternity.

For all the hope in which it was conceived, NHS Dentistry quickly began to show signs of the split personality that would afflict it throughout its life. Whilst purporting to be kind and generous, it could at the same time be money-grubbing and threatening. By the age of three it had already cast aside its practice of treating all and sundry without charge and was demanding payments of up to £1 with a hideously-squealing drill in one hand and a hideously-squealing patient in the other. When simple extortion proved insufficient to sate its lust for terror, NHS Dentistry moved into the protection business, threatening its victims with gnashers resembling Stonehenge and mouths full of gun-metal fillings unless they chose to hand over large portions of their cash and "go private".

With the service on the NHS growing poorer and poorer more and more were forced to fall into the arms of private dentistry or, like Gordon Brown, resolve never to smile again. Soon the nation was divided into two classes, the gummy poor, their teeth whipped out in a sad attempt to evade the dental Mafia, and the shiny-toothed rich, their molars bright but their wallets considerably lighter.

When, last year, the Tooth Fairy was murdered for 50 pence by a gang of freelance orthodontists, the game was finally up. Now almost wholly given over to private work and free dental service now scarcer than hens’ - or, indeed, healthy British - teeth, NHS Dentistry had no choice but to apply the gas to itself.

NHS Dentistry will be buried at the Church of Laurence Olivier amidst much gnashing and wailing of patients’ rotten teeth. It is survived by tying a string between the offending molar and a door-knob, ill-fitting dentures and endless American jokes about English teeth.

Ian Paisley’s Refusal To Sit Down 1969-2007

Ian Paisley’s Refusal To Sit Down lost its long and extremely loud battle against gravity yesterday when Unionist leader Ian Paisley himself agreed to sit down with his arch-enemy, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams – the two men having reached an historic agreement to share power in Northern Ireland on May 8… Although no agreement has been reached between the two leaders for sharing power on May 9, May 10, May 11…

Ian Paisley’s Refusal To Sit Down took its first faltering steps in 1969 in protest at the British Army being sent into the province to protect Catholics from Loyalist attacks. Before 1969 there was no sectarian divide in Northern Ireland, no one had ever heard of the Battle of the Boyne or seen an Orange Man and Catholics and Protestants skipped hand-in-hand through the Six Counties singing All You Need Is Love.

But as the oh-so-slightly-euphemistically-titled The Troubles began to wreak havoc across the province, Ian Paisley’s Refusal To Sit Down made him very popular on buses full of (protestant) pensioners and pregnant (protestant) women, but caused him great personal anguish as, year after year, it stopped him from winning the much-coveted Belfast Apprentices Musical Chairs Contest.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, The Refusal grew in strength (and volume) – refusing to bend at the knee, or indeed apply the ointment to the appropriate area, for anyone. In the late 90s, when Tony Blair encouraged both sides to replace stand-up rows with stand-up talks, agreements were made which led to the decommissioning of James Nesbitt, Gloria Hunniford and Tom Paulin – making sure that they could never again be used to terrorise innocent civilians in the province or on the mainland.

But having stood up for nearly 40 years, The Refusal was getting tired, and as Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, threatened to dissolve the Stormont Assembly, it was on its last legs. Yesterday morning, Ian Paisley’s Refusal To Sit Down finally buckled and fell into the waiting arms of Gerry Adams... and onto a large rubber ring.

The Refusal is predeceased by Northern Ireland’s vital bowler hat and ski-mask industries and by the painters of sectarian murals. It will be buried at Stormont tonight once General John de Chastelain has confirmed that Ian Paisley’s Refusal To Sit Down has been interred and “put beyond use”.

It is survived by Ian Paisley’s Mouth, Gerry Adams’ Beard and Britain’s fabulous history of partition which has successfully kept the peace for so many years between Israel and Palestine, Pakistan and India, the Republic and Northern Ireland and Number 10 and Number 11, Downing Street.