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.

British Foreign Policy

Britain never used to need a foreign policy because it ruled all of the foreign countries anyway. This ended after the Second World War when the Empire was lost. Since then, Britain's foreign policy has consisted of three strands. The first is to do everything possible to annoy the French. The second is to do as little as possible to annoy all the countries that used to be in the Empire to make up for all the terrible things they did in the past. The third is to provide a fig-leaf of international respectability to the Americans whenever they want to start a war. This makes Britain one of the most popular members of the International Community.

Silvia Berlusconi

Silvia Berlusconi made history in 1994 when he became Italy's first openly homosexual Prime Minister, building on the good work done by the 14 repressed homosexual Prime Ministers who have served that country since 1930.

Silvia was born in Milan in 1936, the first of 3 children - Silvia's father Giuseppe organized regular races between his children. After university, Silvia built a successful career in construction where he distinguished himself by becoming the only person in Italian business to avoid any dealings at all with the Mafia, a feat he achieved by exploiting their well-known homophobia. As Mafia don Tomasso Buscetta said during his 1986 trial, 'We all wanted to get our hands on Berlusconi's operation but we were afraid he would fancy us!'

During the 1970s, Silvia became bored with building buildings and decided instead to build a media empire. Over the next 20 years he became his country's most successful media mogul, earning him the soubriqet 'Italy's Robert Maxwell.' His great success and resultant wealth were not, however, enough to satisfy the great man. His country was sadly in decline, the laughing stock of Europe. Silvia could see that his country needed him and he entered the body politic.

Berlusconi's domestic politics have been generally popular and uncontroversial as he has enacted many much-needed laws like those designed to stop politicians being prosecuted for crimes. The greatest controversy of his premiership came with his support for the Iraq War. Italians were unconcerned with the support itself - they correctly assumed that they would follow their long established policy of changing sides half way through - but concerns were raised after it was alleged that Silvia had only supported the war because he had a crush on Donald Rumsfeld. The resulting scandal did a great deal of damage to Italio-American relations which sunk to their lowest point since Mussolini's famous 1938 speech in which he mocked Roosevelt's support for the Boy Scouts as being, 'A bit fruity.'

Luckily, the change of President in 2009 brought a fresh start - one which Silvia grasped in masterly fashion by paying warm complement to the new President's tan.

Smoking

Smoking tobacco became the world's favourite hobby after Walter Raleigh discovered the plant in the 16th century and started giving away free samples at his bicycle shop. The habit was considered a cheap and safe way to keep warm and look more interesting to girls but it took a sinister turn after the Second World War after the introduction of nicotine to the product. This was intended to reduce the nasty smell and was widely welcomed but then it turned out to be an addictive carcinogen which killed millions of people which made people change their mind, at least outside France.

Attitudes to smoking vary widely around the world. Smoking in enclosed public spaces is now forbidden in the UK and large parts of the USA but remains widespread in Eastern Germany where smoking was promoted during the Communist era as an anti-Facist symbol, smoking having been disapproved of by the Nazis. As already intimated, the French regard smoking as a national pastime although classrooms are now divided into smoking and non-smoking areas. In South America, smoking has undergone something of a Renaissance as a popular anti-US reaction. At the other end of the spectrum, moves have been made by the Dutch government to have smoking officially designated by the UN as a crime against humanity with smokers to be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Kentucky Fried Chicken was invented in the American state of Idaho in 1869 by Colonel Ken Tucky III. The secret of the original recipe remains closely guarded by the Colonel's descendants. They have said, however, that there is no truth in the rumour that they use special genetically modified chickens that have been engineered to have no beak, feathers or feet and which are fed through tubes. A spokesman angrily denied the claim in 2007, insisting that, "It is a lie to suggest that we use Franken-chicken in our product, or any other kind of chicken for that matter!"

Christianity

Christianity is a major religion. It was founded by Jesus and it was named after the day he was born, Christmas. The day is still celebrated as one of Christianity's most holy festivals when we remember His favourite disciple Santa Claus. The other great Christian festival is Easter when we celebrate the Lord's fondness for cream eggs.

There are lots of sorts of Christianity; Catholic, Greek Unorthadox and Presleyterianism, the blues influenced rock and roll church. There are also the Baptists who insist on using bread rolls during the Eucharist instead of Communion wafers.

Home Taping

People often wonder how the music industry on both sides of the Atlantic has come to be dominated by contestants on 'reality' television shows like X Factor and America's Got Talent churning out banal, uninspired cover versions of old songs. "What happened to creativity?" people ask.

The answer, of course, is that new music was killed during the 1980s by Home Taping. It is one of the greatest tragedies of human history.

Cliff Richard

Sir Cliff Richards was born in India in 1940. He caught the Rock and Roll bug as a young man when he saw Buddy Holly on his little known Indian Tour of 1954 and immediately realized that his destiny was to become a Rock and Roll act. After a brief and unsuccessful attempt to launch a singing career, he relocated to England, having realized that the Indian market wasn't ready for Elvis Presley impersonations. He brought with him his backing band, The Darkies, although they quickly changed their name to The Shadows after several hundred protesters arrived from the Carribean aboard The Windrush. In solidarity with his band, Sir Cliff also changed his name from Cliff Richards to the snappier Cliff Richard.

The move and the name change were immediately successful and Sir Cliff was soon churning out hits such as Move It and Living Dog and living the traditional Rock and Roll lifestyle full of women, booze and drugs.

Sir Cliff courted controversy in the 1960s when he became a prominent Gay Rights campaigner at a time when it remained taboo, famously using the Eurovision Song Contest as a platform to promote the cause. His song contained the lyrics;

Congratulations, and jubilations,

When I tell everyone that you're in love with me.

Recriminations, and complications,

When they all realize that you're the same sex as me!

The song was clearly the best in the competition but ran up against the homophobic Mediterranean vote and was beaten into second place by the macho Spanish entry La La La Ding A Ling A Ling.

Sir Cliff wasn't to be put off and he entered the contest on a further 5 occasions without success, although he could eventually claim a victory for his values when the Eurovision was won by the transexual act Dana.

Sir Cliff put his campaigning days behind him during the 1980s, contenting himself instead with the occasional anti-Thatcher and pro-CND comments while appearing on chatshows.

Golliwog

Cuddly racist stereotype beloved by crazy old women the world over.

The Inter-War Period

The Inter-War period is the time between the First and Second World Wars. It was a great time to be alive being marked by economic expansion, hot jazz music, art deco, women's sufferage and cinema. But then someone realized that tho be an Inter-War period they were going to have to have another war. This made everyone very depressed - indeed the period was called the 'Great Depression.' People set about electing governments that were crazy enough to start a war (Hitler, Mussolini etc.) or ineffectual enough to let it happen (Chamberlain, Roosevelt etc.) and so people stopped spending their money on surrealist paintings and started wrecking their economies to the point where a war might seem like an improvement.

Roger Whittaker

Roger Whittaker is a world famous English easy-listening singer-songwriter. His trademark was his unique whistling ability. What is not widely known is that he acquired this ability while serving with the British Special Operations Executive behind enemy lines in Occupied France during the Second World War. British agents like Whittaker used a system of whistled signals to communicate with their allies in the French Resistance while on sabotage operations against the Nazis so as to avoid linguistic mishaps. The technique is still used by UK Special Forces today in Afghanistan whilst trying to communicate with the Americans.

Endangered Animals

Endangered animals were invented in the 1970s to provide moral justification for zoos to keep animals caged for our viewing delight. As such, 93% of endangered animals are cute.

The top ten most endangered animals are (in reverse order);

10. The Giant Panda

9. The Lesser Manatee

8. The Long-Eared Marmoset

7. The Medium-Sized Panda

6. The Austrian Honey Bear

5. The Polar Chicken

4. The Dwarf Piglet

3. The Kenyan Stripeless Zebra

2. The Amazonian Elipotomus

1. The Javanese Tiger-Cow.

The story of the Kenyan Stripeless Zebra is particularly sad. This noble beast was once the dominant Zebra species but it has lost out in the evolutionary race to its stripey and thus harder to see cousin. Many conservationists refuse to accept the Javanese Tiger-Cow's place on the list after an investigation by Bild claimed that the only known specimen - which lives in Berlin Zoo - is in fact a common Jersey Cow with stripes painted on. This is fiercely denied by the animal's keeper.

I-Pad

The I-Pad is a sporting protection implement used by footballers. It was invented by Larry Cockburn after a conversation in a pub. Cockburn recalled; "We noted that a footballer's shins are protected from being kicked by shinpads. But what happens if he gets kicked in the eye? That's right, he gets blinded. So why not wear pads over the eyes as well?"

The obvious answer - that you wouldn't be able to see the ball if you had two bloody great pads over your eyes - didn't stop him from pressing ahead with the launch of his new product or from commissioning one of Europe's most prestigious advertising agencies, Saatchi and Saatchi, to market it. It was they who renamed it the I-Pad rather than Cockburn's preferred 'Eye Protection Shields' after a long and sometimes bitter argument. The marketing strategy was, alas, a failure and Cockburn Industries was wound up just one year later having sold a grand total of no units.

Cockburn is currently suing Apple for theft of his intellectual property after they used the expensively purchased name of his product for their latest pointless computer.

John Terry

John 'Dirty Boy' Terry is a mediocre football player for Chelsea who is widely acknowledged as England's greatest lover.

Terry made his name as a footballer by being the sort of talentless, thick, 'no-nonsense' defender that English football fans and commentators so admire and his career reached its pinnacle when he was named captain of the England team after he was voted player least like David Beckham.

It is, however, as a lothario that Terry has become most famous. With his legendary good looks and his pig-like physique, Terry has proven to be irresistible to women. One former lover was said to remark that, 'he was like an animal in bed...a rhinoceros.'

Rhyming Slang

Rhyming slang is a dialect that is popular amongst Cockneys which consists of phrases that rhyme with the common words they represent. For example, the phrase 'Thru'penny Bits' is used instead of the word 'Hits' as in, 'I really enjoy Katy Perry's Thru'penny Bits,' as the popular cockney comedian Russell Brand was heard to say when asked what first attracted him to his fiancée.

Economic Forecasting

Economic forecasting is the art of working out what everyone wants to happen and then saying that it will, loudly and in a confident voice, preferably while wearing an expensive looking suit. Economic forecasts are highly valued by governments, stock market investors, banks and other important people who will do whatever economic forecasters tell them to do despite the fact that all the available evidence proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the economic forecasts are worthless and that they would be better off rolling some dice or flipping a coin. The only consistently reliable economic forecast ever produced is that people will always pay ever increasing amounts for economic forecasts.

Wife Selling

Wife is a long forgotten English custom. It was used as a cheap alternative to divorce from the 17th century onwards and involved a man auctioning off his unwanted (or unaffordable) wife in order to take on a newer (or cheaper) model - if he was lucky he might be ale to pick up a bargin at the same auction.

Although never strictly legal, the practice often occurred quite openly with sales often being advertised in the newspaper. One such example from 1683 read; "For sale, one wiffe. Most comely. Goode condition; but one carefull owner. 3 shillings and 4 pence O.N.O." Records show the she went for 5 shillings, making her husband a tidy profit with which he bought a new cow.

The phenomenon became increasingly rare but only finally died out in the 1960s when the sexual revolution caused the bottom to fall out of the market.

The Boer War

The Boer War was fought in southern Africa between British and Dutch settlers over who would have the right to oppress the locals. It was given its name in honour of Lord Baden-Powell who boered everyone to death with his constant accounts of his defence of Mafeking.

The Dutch attacked in 1899, besieging the towns of Ladyboy, Kimberley and Mikado but were soon being pushed back by British Imperial forces under Lord Kitchener, who had grown a new moustache for the occasion.

The Dutch retaliated by launching a gorilla war with gorillas imported from further north. The British launched a ruthless scorched earth policy, burning down the banana plantations to deny the gorillas food and rounding them up into 'concentration camps,' known as zoos.

Fraggle Rock

This controversial Muppet Show spin-off featured a race of tiny furry creatures who lived under a lighthouse on an unidentified island and who had adventures and learned important lessons. The series was abruptly cancelled after concerns were raised about possible Nazi overtones in the subject matter. The Fraggles were portrayed as a master race who lived a life of leisure at the expense of the Doozer untermenschen who were portrayed as having a racial propensity to live as slave labour. The Fraggles lived in fear of an outside threat in the Gorgs who were believed by some to represent the Soviet Union with the lighthousekeeper and his dog representing the western allies. The makers of the programme rubbished the claims pointing out that the Fraggles were multi-coloured, but they were unable to retain the support of the networks. Luckily, the rest of the Muppet family have remained unsullied by the claims.