McDonalds

McDonalds is a world-wide burger franchise which purveys disgusting food to millions of people every day. It was originally called MacDonalds, taking its name and its inspiration from the tale of the Scottish Clan MacDonald which is credited with inventing the precursor to the hamburger which consisted of a slice of haggis placed between two oatcakes garnished with a piece of soggy lettuce, something purporting to be tomato and some whitish sludge laughingly called mayonnaise.

The first burger joint was opened in Milwaukee in 1934 selling essentially the same product as the old Scottish clan except that the oatcakes were deemed to be too healthy and so were replaced by baps. The opening sparked a three year legal battle in which Clan MacDonald sued over the use of its name. Interestingly, it had originally attempted to sue over the use of their recipe but this was laughed out of the Scottish Court of Session which believed that Scotland should be thankful that another nation was prepared to take responsibility for the appalling dish.

The dispute was settled by the ingenious device of dropping the 'a' from Mac thereby indicating that the product was entirely unconnected with Scotland.

Further controversy hit the franchise in 1996 when vegan groups picketed branches across America and Europe in protest at the lack of a vegetarian option. McDonalds responded by placing 'Salad with Fries' on every menu.

Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is an English clever-dick who sprang to fame in the 1980s as the comedy partner of Hugh Laurie. Laurie was born in Oxford in 1959. He attended Eton before going to Cambridge where he represented the University in the 1980 Boat Race. It was at Cambridge that he met Emma Thompson and former celebrity Tony Slattery.

He began his TV career on the Granada TV show Alfresco before going on the appear in Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster before moving to Hollywood to appear in 101 Dalmatians and the Stuart Little films.

He has reached his greatest fame, however, since appearing in the US television series House. He is now officially the most famous person in the world who is British even though most people think he is American.

Wholegrain

Wholegrain was invented by Nestle's cereals division in 1975 in response to the growing health food boom (itself a reaction to the wild-living culture of the 60's). Nestle's head of cereals at the time, Harold Weinersteiner, speaking in 2009, said,

"We had spent 3 years trying to make our cereals healthier, with no success. Oh, we could make healthy cereal. The only problem was that it tasted like shit. The only cereal that we could convince anyone to eat was the stuff that was eighty percent sugar with a tiny bit of wheat thrown in. Then we had an idea. Instead of cutting up the grains of wheat as we had traditionally done, we would use the grain whole. It would save a fortune on grain cutting machines plus it would allow us to call it 'wholegrain.' As this sounded a bit like 'wholemeal,' people would think it was healthy! And it is still working today!"

Luge

Luge is a winter sport which involves sliding at high speed down an ice track on a tiny sled. The sport originated in the Swiss mountains where, in a macho show of courage that thrilled their womenfolk, young men would slide down icy slopes on upturned toilet seats, hence the sport's name. Over the years they experimented with various pieces of household furniture including couches, sideboards and bedsteads, before settling on the tea-tray as the optimum piece of crazy sliding equipment. To make the sport a bit camper, they began sliding feet-first while wearing skin-tight outfits.

The most famous current luger is Hans van Bruckelsnort who became world and Olympic champion despite there being no mountains in his native Holland. He is also the first openly gay athlete to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, despite that event including men's figure skating since 1930.

Good Friday

In the Middle Ages, Good Friday was called 'God Friday' as it commemorated the day on which Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. The day was renamed Good Friday as part of the arch-secularizer Richard Nixon's great atheist crusade of 1970. His proposal to change the Great Seal to read, "In Easter Bunny we Trust," was narrowly defeated by the Senate.

April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day was introduced by the United Nations in 1974 to raise international awareness of the growing problem of idiocy. It was originally to be called International Idiocy Day and was to be held on April 17th but pro-idiocy campaigners successfully argued that idiots would not understand the words 'international' or 'idiocy' and would struggle to count to 17 and so the occasion was moved to April 1st and renamed April Fool's Day. It has been held successfully every year since but research shows that idiocy rates have not fallen and, in many Western countries, might actually be increasing.

Ricky Martin

Ricky Martin is a Puerto Rican pop singer famous in both the English and Spanish speaking worlds for his crazy songs. He caused shock throughout the pop music industry when he revealed in 2010 that he is homosexual. On the same day, the Pope issued an encyclical to announce that he is a Catholic and a committee of bears held a press conference in Washington DC to make clear that they do, in fact, shit in the woods.