A woman needs a book like a fish needs...?

Women are to be prevented from entering bookshops as part of an upcoming scheme to further empower them. Instead, all towns in the UK will feature branches of the all-female 'Fabuloustorez!' chain, in which they will be encouraged to purchase 'chick-lit', relationship based self-help publications and glossy magazines in a female-focussed environment, with powerful spotlights and mirrors on every surface so that guests can view themselves at every imaginable angle without even having to visit a high street changing room. It is hoped that the new stores will allow the complex modern woman to get her 'fix' of empty-headed prose without the inconvenience of being surrounded by literature, politics, history, philosophy and science, which are naturally of no relevance whatever. The scheme replaces last year's controversial proposal for a country-wide system of 'Truth Booths' in which women would stand naked staring at the word "unfuckable" for 40 minutes a day.

The Gospel Truth

Texts known as 'the forgotten gospels' believed to be hidden under the bed of an embarrassed Matthew who wrote them with a really bad hangover, suggest that Jesus had a birthmark on his left arm the shape of a birthmark-shaped potato. On questioning his mother as to the blemish, she spoke of a vague recollection of the infant being tossed across the stable by an amorous goat when she was asleep.

The Funny Pages?

Recent historical research suggests that Chester "Chumps" Flagpole, the Earl of Bucketyshire and notorious nephew of George VI, was in fact a smug little tit-faced fuckbag who regularly liked to devour the roasted babies of poor families plucked at random from the phonebook.

Take Your Pleasure Where You Find It

Right up until 1940, it was considered perfectly acceptable for French men to masturbate openly in public places such as parks and cafes; the only area in which the act was forbidden was at church during a wedding (funerals were ok). Defecation was also considered a social activity; shit-parties would be held at which unusually shaped excretions were awarded with sexual favours.

Youth is Wasted...

Television's Ant n Dec live inside a 50ft 'Adidas Fraction' training shoe where they eat nothing but Haribo jelly candies, play twister and talk about their most favourite episodes of Friends (The One With The Nuclear Holocaust), according to reports. They have also been said to romp around a bouncy castle permanently erected in their back garden and to sleep in Star Wars sleeping bags.

Not Big, But Clever

Locusts have an average IQ of 162 and can understand most computer programming languages, a recent study has shown. They enjoy the novels of Proust, but find Jane Austen a bit tedious.

Good Things Come in Small Packages

Donald Sutherland paid a dwarf to follow him around for six months leading up to the filming of Don't Look Now. The intention was to make him feel sufficiently unnerved, but he and the dwarf actually became friends, forming an acquaintance that led to the marriage of Sutherland's daughter Validity to an overweight bus driver and his sarcastic veterinarian sidekick.

Extra Special Reserve?

Those chubby cheeks sported by Marlon Brando as Don Vito in the Godfather had to be specially prepared for each day's filming by an Argentinian prostitute who would salivate on pieces of cotton wool which had previously been soaked in Jack Daniels regurgitated by the hooker. Mr Brando insisted that the padding be prepared in this fashion, and that all people present in the room at the time ingest at least 1 gram of cocaine and wear a cowboy hat on their left foot.

Fashion Victim

The classic 1970s pants worn by Sigourney Weaver at the end of Alien were actually designed by a Mr T Stale of Manchester who won a competition, run by the Guardian newspaper, by correctly answering the question: "Who won at pontoon mother?" Mr Stale continues to pursue his career in fashion, mainly by leaving soiled handkerchiefs among the lingerie in department stores across the UK.

Rite of Passage

As part of an initiation rite, new cast members on East Enders are regularly immersed in brine and licked clean by Anita Dobson before made to laugh heartily at a humorous drawing of Queen Victoria eating a jar of jellied ecstasy tablets.