Parliament gets a shock over potty pensioner

Social services were called in yesterday to assist in the case of a confused elderly woman who was found wandering through Whips Chambers at the House of Commons. No one knows how she got past the tough security.

Discovered by the Concerned Member for Sucking in Dorset, Iolanthe Bulge-Cummerbund, he told reporters he had found her pulling at a door that had been jammed shut since 1990 and mumbling something about a "bell".

After gently questioning the woman, Westminster social services proposed handing the case over to Grantham authorities, on the basis that the confused pensioner was obviously racist, and they'd be able to deal with her in Grantham because they are more used to that sort of language about immigrants "up there".

Onlookers were visibly affected by the plight of the pensioner as she was carried, wrapped in a red blanket, from the grounds of the house.

Miss Bella Hello, former Director of Corporate Social Responsibility for an international energy company, said that she had been passing by Westminster Bridge to her usual begging post on Victoria Street when she had seen an old bird with funny hair being dragged towards a waiting ambulance.

"She was screaming that she used to dance with the wolves when there really were wolves around here. It was kind of sad, really, but I stayed out of the way because she had this mad look about her. I bet she was really something back in the 80s. You could see all the staff from the parliamentary offices come out on the terraces to see what the noise was. It's funny but one old guy crossed himself, went really pale and backed away into the House like he'd seen a ghost or something."

Unusually, senior party leaders from both sides of the political divide held an emergency meeting and issued a joint statement regretting any distress caused to Commons staff.

"Things like this aren't supposed to happen," claimed a senior Conservative spokesman. "But we refuse to try to make political capital out of a sad event and a lonely life." Mr Dumble Alabaster speaking for the Prime Minister — currently in Scotland launching a Home Office Backstabbing Initiative in Gordon Brown's Perth constituency — said: "The Government always has time for old people, no matter how long it took them to decide we were electable. It doesn't mean we're going to make heating bills for the elderly VAT-free or anything, but we definitely don't hold grudges."

Last night Grantham social services were able to confirm that the woman, known only as "Mrs T" was back at home with her husband, also rather frail. "You have to watch her," explained a GSS spokesman. "The first time she came to our attention she'd managed to set up a Foundation in her own name and was planning a business trip to Japan, where she maintained they really 'understood her'."