Tramps! Looking for a drink with a touch of class? Flanagan & Allen, Britain’s leading manufacturer of methylated spirits, is collaborating with luxury brand Louis Roederer to launch a new product for the discerning consumer of industrial-strength alcohol.

Cristal Meths is not like other methyl alcohols. For one thing, a bottle of it costs fifty-eight times as much as the other, downmarket brands. Don’t worry, it still tastes like paint stripper – after all, it is paint stripper. But it’s a smoother paint stripper with a more sophisticated palate. You’ll want to wear your best top hat (the one with the crown like a half-opened tin can) when you’re sipping Cristal Meths from a finely wrought McDonald’s paper cup.

In a blind taste test, noted connoisseur Jilly Goolden said: “Ooooh, I’m getting turps, I’m getting nail varnish, I’m getting corrosive sensations in the lining of my oesophagus…” She was unable to comment on Cristal Meths’s delightful lavender colouration, however, as the taste test literally made her go blind.

No self-respecting gentleman of the road will want to be seen lying in a pool of his own piss without a magnum of Cristal Meths at his side. That said, no self-respecting gentleman of the road has internet access either, so perhaps we’re not targeting the right market.
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REUTERS - In the early hours of this morning, the United States launched a full-scale aerial assault on the Buckinghamshire market town of High Wycombe, saying that it was "harbouring terrorists".

Taking off from nearby RAF Brize Norton, a squadron of whatever type of plane it is that the US Air Force uses nowadays rained fire and death from the skies, destroying such important strategic targets as hospitals, primary schools, community centres and branches of WH Smiths.

As burning children ran screaming in the streets of the commuter-belt suburbia, President George W Bush held a press conference on the White House lawn. "The United States will actively seek out and punish all those who harbour or even live near to terrorists," he said. "We will not allow the terrorists to destroy our way of life. Islamic 'fashism' is a cancer that eats away at our love of freedom. And the only cure for that cancer is... er..." At this point the president broke off to speak to his aides, before hastily ending the press conference.

Meanwhile, in related news, all travellers by air, train, bus, London Underground, cross-channel ferry and licensed minicab are being subjected to full cavity body searches in case they are concealing terrorist paraphernalia such as contact-lens solution, fizzy drinks or garden fertiliser in their arse, vagina, bellybutton or earhole.

The Home Secretary, "Dr" John Reid, said: "This is in no way a grotesquely disproportionate overreaction. This level of personal intrusion is necessary to prevent a massacre on the scale of the first day of the Somme."

In response to suggestions that his latest trough of security measures were quite literally a massive pain in the arse, the Glaswegian hard man replied: "Not at all. In fact, this is a morale-boosting technique that we used in the army. If there are some rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel, we do not just punish them - we punish the entire platoon. It builds moral fibre."

Incredibly, a spokesman for self-appointed media whores The Muslim Council of Great Britain was not available for comment.

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In the course of my researches, I have noticed that many syndicated newspaper cartoons do not bother to have any punchline as such. The work of Charles M Schulz, for example, has a marked tendency to climax with Charlie Brown saying "Good grief", rather than anything that might be identifiable as a joke. So it is in this spirit that we are proud to present Geoffrey Chaucer's latest foray into the realm of comic-strip entertainment:

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If you want a vision of the future, imagine a two-minute silence stamping on a human face forever.

Historical note: there is, in fact, no documentary evidence that Geoffrey Chaucer ever met William Langland, the famous author of Piers Plowman, much less that they were friends. The characters in this bdiary are fictional. Any resemblance to any genuine historical figures is unintentional, and highly unlikely.

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There's not a lot going on in the world at the moment, I understand that. In fact, there's precious little news for our so-called journalists to research. And one can only assume the daily flood of press releases and spurious "surveys" has dried up.

I assume this because over the last few days (and, I predict, the forthcoming ones too), those miniature people on the ITV news have been wandering about their CGI studio banging on and on about the terrible old 7th of July bombings. Those BBC types are at it as well.

It's the anniversary, you see. Today, the 4th of July, is the anniversary of the 7th of July bombings. And so was yesterday.

Not too difficult to grasp, is it?

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The story so far...

Mild-mannered Geoffrey Chaucer, a clerk of the king's works, has been ordered by (a not terribly accurate representation of) Richard II to bang off The Canterbury Tales in next to no time. But can he get it done?

Now read on...

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