Hello Sherri,

Sincerely,
Bob Gillahan

This is excellent spam. They start out with the highly credible claim that they’ve just slightly mis-spelled the e-mail address of somebody called Sherri — and why shouldn’t Sherri have an address which is only a slight typo away from mark.rendle@thecompanyiworkfor.com? Then they name-check Garry Lompard, whom I’ve never heard of, but I have no reason to doubt he is anything but an expert in his field, which appears to be something to do with instruments. Any inside information he’s giving out is bound to be good.

I was a bit fuzzy on the next bit, where they tell me to buy stock in a company which is going to explode, until I realised they meant “explode” in the “become extremely valuable on the public stock exchange” sense and not the “burst violently as a result of internal pressure” sense.

But then they really draw me into their web, by telling me not to tell anybody about this opportunity. Up to that point, I may have suspected that a copy of this e-mail was being sent to upwards of a million people, but now I know it’s just for this Sherri person. I feel kind of bad for her, missing out on this, but probably next time Bob sends her a stock tip he’ll get the address right, so she’ll be OK in the end.

I don’t know what “Out CRSVF on your radar’s now” means. It’s probably some sort of stock market technical jargon or something. I expect if I phoned my broker, or if I got myself a broker and then phoned him and told him to out CRSVF on my radar’s, he’d know what to do.

Sherri appears to know somebody called John who might read her e-mail, or she might pass the message on. Or maybe Sherri is John, except for weekends and special evenings, and Bob knows him/her from a particular club or something.

The precise investment advice is very nice, too. It’s probably because this is technically insider trading, so any unusual activity on the market will be noticed, and could get Bob and Garry in trouble. Maybe even me, if this e-mail could be tracked, although I could use the fact that I’m not a transvestite called John/Sherri as plausible denial.

I don’t think I will respond to Bob, though, just in case. There might not be that much stock in CRSVF to go round; I don’t want to share it with John/Sherri. He’d only spend the increasement on makeup and rubber breasts anyway.

Boy, it’s hard to escape from violent, tyrannical regimes into Britain today, isn’t it? Razor-wire fences and vicious guard dogs patrolling the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, and poorly ventilated lorries causing no end of problems for those favouring the ferries have made it harder than ever before for genuine refugees to sneak into Europe’s richest, most luxurious country and make a valid claim for political asylum.

With this in mind, Untitled Document are pleased to present this guide to re-creating the look and feel of this green and pleasant land anywhere in the world*.

Accommodation

Mansions can be built relatively cheaply, and you could easily have a 40-bedroom stately home every bit as nice as the ones that everyone in Kent has. All you will need is a spade, a couple of hundred thousand bricks and a tonne or so of cement. Using the spade, dig a hole the size and shape you want your mansion to be (looking down from above). Make the hole about 12 feet deep. Now, starting at the bottom of the hole, use the cement to stick the bricks together until they form the shape of a house, but much bigger. Congratulations! You’ve just built your very own British mansion†!

Finance

This one’s easy - just cut out some rectangles of paper and write amounts of money on them with coloured felt-tip pens. For the real authenticity-seekers, the colours to use are: light blue for £5 notes, light brown for £10, purple for £20 and orange for those lovely £50s. Keep at it - within a few days you’ll have a bigger stack of cash than the Duchess of Perivale!
What’s that you say? Your newly drawn money has no financial value? Of course not! Currency is completely worthless in Britain, as we are an enlightened society and have abolished money altogether, so everything is free‡!

Recreation

On a summer’s evening, there’s nothing we traditional Britons like better than having a few cold beers, getting high on any one of hundreds of free and legal drugs**, building a massive bonfire and throwing a family of gypsies on it. Combining as it does a sense of bonding between neighbours with a genuinely fun method of ethnic cleansing, this quintessentially British past-time is enjoyed by young and old alike. Why not have your own gypsy-burning party? Just make sure you use a good hardwood which has been allowed to dry well, and plump, well-fed gypsies which are freely available all over continental Europe††.

Huzzah (as we say in Cool Britannia)! All the joy and wonder of being a genuine asylum seeker in Britain, without having to drag yourself hundreds of miles across the other free, democratic countries between your politically unstable, poverty-ridden homeland and Calais.

*Except Norway.
†If you are in an un-Britainlike country where it sometimes rains, try adding a roof to your mansion with tiles and glue.
‡And cats shit diamonds.
**Which are delivered every morning, with the milk.
††Except Norway.

We therefore fully acknowledge that Mr Ross was not a CIA operative at the time of the mission and offer our unreserved apologies for any inconvenience our story may have caused him, his family or David Baddiel.

Wendy Craig’s involvement in the matter remains open to question, and readers are urged to jump to their own conclusions.

Speaking via satellite link from her secret base below a disused oil rig in the North Sea, Lady Thatcher insisted that the 22-metre-high ThatcherBot 3000 is the Conservative Party’s only hope for victory over Labour in the next election. She drew attention to the machine’s positronic “brain”, which has been pre-programmed with a range of psychotically right-wing policies, and the high-powered lasers concealed in the chin for destroying Europe.

“My mechanical progeny is a clear choice to lead my beloved Party to victory in the next election,” the self-styled “Maniacal Mistress of Mayhem” pronounced. “Only with this combination of cutting-edge political programming and awesome destructive power can we make Britain great once again.”

She went on to say: “For ten long years now, I have brooded darkly in my bitter exile, and in this time I have come to realise that what this country needs is a gigantic mecha-me, both at the dispatch box and also on the battle-field. Our enemies in Europe and beyond shall feel my wrath dispensed by electrical proxy as my atom-powered proto-child negotiates terms and razes cities to smoking rubble.”

Thatcher then showed a fifteen-minute promotional video of the Statezoid criticising the level of control the Bundesbank exerts over European financial policy and crushing limousines between its hydraulic fingers, before urging the Party faithful to admit it into the leadership ballot “if you value Kensington and Chelsea”.

Political pundits predict that Lady Thatcher shall be granted her wish of seeing the destructobot lead the Conservative Party, pointing out that she still holds much sway over the elder statesmen and women who remember her stalking the corridors of power like a well-oiled stoat.

John Humphreys, presenter of Radio 4’s “Today” programme, opined that those who remember her will reflexively obey her without a second thought. He added: “And those who are younger would certainly have had True Blue parents who, in their pampered youth, told them Mrs Thatcher was coming to get them if ever they were bad.”

Kenneth Clarke, not currently the favourite in the leadership race, said he welcomed the additional challenge that the ThatcherBot 3000 would bring to the contest, adding that the mega-mecha could “count on my support” if it beat him to the finishing post. Sadly, Iain Duncan Smith was smacking badgers in Somerset and was unavailable for comment.

Once again, we apologise unreservedly to you, your family, and your employers for any distress or missed deadlines our error may have caused.

As early holiday makers began to arrive at the many campsites and caravan parks to enjoy the warm summer sun and various tourist attractions, surely none of them could have thought that their lives were about to be turned upside down by the worst natural disaster to hit Britain in over a century. And turned upside down they weren’t, as the ground remained as steady as a rock, trembling not even a bit as they pitched their tents and lit their portable barbecues.

Kevin Pointon, 14, from Dudley, happily played with his younger sister Lianne and a few other kids staying at their park, blissfully unaware of their distant brush with the remote possibility of death or injury in the terrible, unstoppable force of Mother Nature. Not for them the cries for help from beneath piles of rubble that were once majestic monuments to man’s tenuous control over his world. In vain they didn’t search for survivors through the night, hoping against hope that their loved ones somewhere, somehow had survived the horrific catastrophe. On they played, their toys not a poignant reminder of the young lives that had been destroyed one fateful day in Cornwall.

In Truro, hastily erected field hospitals were converted into sports halls and cinemas as the never-increasing stream of dead and dying victims failed to materialise. One man, a medical student in his third year, told reporters: “What can we do? There are just no injured people to treat. I personally have taken care of nobody at all today, and it’s only eleven in the morning.”

Soldiers on a nearby army base continued with training exercises and manoeuvres as they were not mobilised to evacuate residents of still-quiet towns and villages, nor to provide assistance with the search for survivors. And the Red Cross already has no plans at all to send workers with unnecessary food packages and medical supplies to the happy county of Cornwall.

As the complete lack of dust did not settle on the un-shattered remains of Newquay, local landlord Ken Nugent didn’t wipe a single tear from his eye as he surveyed the tranquil scene before him. “Just yesterday I was playing with my young son on those swings over there,” he said. “I probably will again this afternoon. He likes the swings.”

Nugent is typical of the Cornish people at this relatively easy time, not having to draw on previously unsuspected reserves of strength and determination, nor look to each other for emotional and spiritual support, as well as practical help.

So, as you go about your day today, spending time with your loved ones and making plans for tomorrow and beyond, don’t worry about sparing a thought for the people of Cornwall, because they’re fine.

The Sun has inspired great mythology throughout history. The Ancient Greeks believed that the Sun was drawn across the sky by the god Apollo, who towed it behind a golden chariot pulled by horses or, in some versions of the story, his wife. The Egyptians believed that a scarab beetle rolled the glowing orb through the heavens, and would venerate the insects for fear of angering their celestial cousin. If an Egyptian stepped on a scarab beetle he would build it a reasonable-sized pyramid and give it a decent burial, with a big ball of dung to take into the next life. Then, if particularly devout, he would eat nothing but dry crackers for a week.

However the strangest Sun-related belief of all time is surely that of Dr Terence Fell of Wellington, New Zealand, who claims that the Sun is stapled to the hat of an old man named George, who visits him regularly for afternoon tea and cheats at Snakes & Ladders. Fell points to the repeated melting of his house as proof of this claim, but becomes reticent under close questioning and accuses people of perfidy when they try and show him astronomical charts.

Galileo’s assertion that the Sun lay at the centre of the solar system (heliocentricity) was initially greeted with hoots of ribald laughter (derision) by those who lived and worked around him (his peers). It also annoyed the Catholic Church so much that they snapped their pencils, and then sued for compensation. When it emerged that Galileo had no money and could not replace the broken pencils, they agreed to settle out of court as long as he admitted that the Sun was nowhere near the centre of the universe and was actually brought into the Vatican at night, for cleaning.

The Sun will eventually burn out, having exhausted its fuel supply, leaving the solar system both dark and cold. The British government have appointed a think-tank to come up with a plan of action for this eventuality, although so far they have failed to produce any ideas beyond “making another one”, and spend most of their time discussing where to go for lunch.

We can only offer our fullest and frankest apologies for any distress this misleading statement may have caused Mrs Hague, Mr Hague, or any women with prams who have seen Mrs Hague coming towards them and had an attack of the vapours.