D-Day Training for Eton Lads

In last June, a group of pupils from Eton College had the privilege of staying a full week in a German bunker on a Normandy’s beach, while outside the setting of the Overlord Operation was recreated thanks to fireworks and other pyrotechnic devices. This immersion in the traumatic German experience of D-Day – the idea of their history teacher, Mr Montgomery – was intended to give our country’s young elite, besides some basic knowledge of World War II, a vivid, metaphoric representation of the current financial state of the UK, and to make them be aware of the kind of virtues they will be expected to show, as leaders, to tackle the economic recession.

The Gospel According to Darwin

Who could ever have believed that, for the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, the most famous of English naturalists would be recognized as the fifth evangelist by the Roman Catholic Church? But this astounding event was bound to happen after an unpublished manuscript of Darwin was discovered by sheer luck in a cave in Sinai one year ago. This amazing document, written both in Aramaic and Koine Greek – two languages Darwin was known to have mastered –, has fortunately nothing to do with the theory of evolution or other nonsense, but records the life of the son of God in a typically biblical style. It took less than six months for the most eminent theologians of the Vatican to conclude that this text was inspired by the Divine Spirit and to include it in the set of books constituting the New Testament canon.

A Vaccine for Europhilia?

Science yesterday took a big step forwards, when a British-Polish research team from the Laboratory of Applied Genetics at Hastings University announced to have identified the Europhobia gene, after a multi-year study of twins. This important discovery opens the way for a medical treatment of Europhilia and could even lead to a vaccine.

My Racial Awareness Course with Prince Harry

I made the acquaintance of Prince Harry during my racial awareness course. At first, I was very pleased to meet this hero of the British army, who is already a lieutenant at 24 years old, but I was a bit disappointed that he did not wear the German Afrika Korps uniform that made him famous all over the world five years ago. He told me then that he had lent it to Max Mosley, who needed it for his next costume party “Colonial hunter and native bird,” in exchange for a free VIP ticket for the Silverstone Grand Prix. Of course, I was quite surprised to see a young lad of royal blood at a racial awareness course, but when I asked Prince Harry why he was obliged to go through such a chore, he had to admit that he had no idea. He had just called one of his Paki fellow cadets a “Paki,” and seemingly there was something wrong with it, because his dad had got very upset and had sent him here to “improve his vocabulary.”

England, the Other Land of Sumo

In its fight against physical prejudice, Croydon Council has decided yesterday to promote the practice of sumo in the city. Recent data have shown that 1 in 4 adults in England are currently obese, the highest rate in Europe, but the conclusion that the Council draws from this figure is quite stimulating. According to Ms Chesterfield, head of the Department of Health and Social Care, “Instead of letting underfed nations make us feel guilty, we should be proud of our first place. Obesity is not a shame but a claim to fame: it proves the exceptional adaptability of the English body to the demands of the food-processing industry’s free market. It’s up to us now to change our own representation of large people, and sumo can help us, by showing that being overweight is not incompatible with the practice of an elite sport.” The Council thus is launching a publicity campaign next autumn, “Fat Makes You Healthy,” sponsored by KFC, and on 1^st October a Sumo Learning Centre – the first of this kind in the UK – will open its doors at the Arena. Boris Johnson is expected at the opening.

SuBa, the Page-Fifty-Five Girl

Britain’s Got Talent gave its audience a very emotional moment yesterday, when Susan Balls, a 48-old-years woman from Blackburn, West Lothian (Scotland), performed an astonishing strip-tease before thousands of million of viewers.

The ITV1’s freak show had begun with its usual parade of social misfits, and it was only after an hour of a soporific display that a middle-aged lady in a shapeless dress appeared on the stage of the Glasgow’s Clyde Auditorium. With her bushy eyebrows and frizzy brown hair, she looked quite as boring as all the preceding applicants, and the public justifiably started to giggle at this particularly disgraceful creature. The judges in turn sniggered when she confessed that she had sent her picture to The Sun every year since the age of 17. “I’m trying to be a page-three girl,” she said. “I’ve never been given my chance before, but here’s hoping it’ll change,” adding that her best masculine friend was a cat called Robert Murdoch Jr. She also explained to the gleeful judges that she would like to be as successful as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which inevitably made the sniggers in the Auditorium grow in volume, given that this poor Scottish spinster looked much more like the hunchback than the gypsy dancer.

Love in the Time of New Labour

The marvellous love story between Miss Bird and Mr Fish began with a car crash at a crossroads near East Croydon station. Miss Bird was speaking on the phone to her best friend, Mrs Hook, and so forgot temporarily the rules of driving, which caused severe damage to Mr Fish’s Aston Martin. When he got out of his car (or rather of the remains of his car), he was really annoyed, all the more so since it was the second time this year that a female driver had hit his £200,000-vehicle. But his anger disappeared immediately as soon as his eyes saw Miss Bird’s face. “It was like seeing Venus herself,” he would say later to his psychoanalyst. As for Miss Bird, she was very annoyed too, because it was the second time this week she hit a sports car near East Croydon station. But her embarrassment disappeared immediately as soon as her eyes saw Mr Fish’s bald skull. “It was like seeing Yul Brynner himself,” she would say later to Mrs Hook. In a single word, it was love at first sight for both of them.