Man with faulty boiler indifferent to celebrity angst

Tabloid editors were in shock today when it was revealed a builder in Marsden was completely uninterested in the latest piece of celebrity fluff - thanks to a faulty boiler!

Peter Johnson, 43, had both the Sun and The Star delivered to his house this morning as usual but, despite skimming them at breakfast, failed to show ANY interest in the latest exclusive! story (carried in both papers) about how S Club 7's Rachel has split up with AJ of the Backstreet Boys.

Usually, Pete would have relished learning the full details and carefully studied the accompanying picture of Rachel in a skimpy bikini, but this time he IGNORED the fact that AJ is thought to be secretly seeing someone from Atomic Kitten and OVERLOOKED Rachel's fears that she will never find the right man.

Sun editor David Yelland was confident, however, that Pete would be unable to resist commenting on the steamy love affair that celebrity haircut Jennifer Anniston had had when she was 18. Incredibly though, Pete had booked the day off work and was not subjected to peer review over a cup of tea.

When Mr Johnson was finally contacted through his letterbox, frantic hacks from both tabloids were amazed to discover a faulty BOILER was at the centre of the showbiz lapse.

"I've no time to read about that now, I've got the plumber coming at one and I've got to clear some stuff out the way," he told the stunned reporters.

Asked if he had heard that Madonna's husband Guy Richie had insisted that she didn't wear see-through tops, Mr Johnson replied: "Look, I've got water all over the floor. I've more pressing matters than Madonna's nipples. "But, he called them 'raspberries' - like in Cockney rhyming slang," the Sun man bleated despairingly. "I don't care what he called them, now leave me to do my business will yer?" Mr Johnson replied. "Anyway, raspberry ripple is rhyming slang for cripple, isn't it?" he commented absent-mindedly.

Incredibly, the lack of hot water and central heating also caused Mr Johnson to miss a TV actresses' party revelations, a frank and honest confession from a drug-riddled out-of-work comedian and pictures of She Who Must Not Be Named patting a dog.

Fleet Street was relieved to hear tonight though that the boiler was an easy job and the plumber had managed to fix it within 20 minutes. Mr Johnson is expected back at work to discuss the lives of the rich and famous tomorrow.

"It's a great weight off my mind," Sun sub-editor Derek Pun told The Rockall Times. "We nearly had to pull Anna Friel's nail-break nightmare off the front to make way for some story about a cure for cancer."