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UK triumph as funeral attendance becomes Olympic sport

The head of the UK delegation to the International Olympic Committee Sir Boris Horace-Morris confirmed today that funeral-attendance will be the first new event at the Olympics since kitten-scything and goat-throwing were re-admitted to the Barcelona games of 1992 in deference to Spanish tradition.

Sir Horace-Morris issued a statement saying: "We are delighted that this most quintessentially English of sports will be taking pride of place in the Athens games of 2004. It has been a long process to get to where we are today, but we are where we are because we were not content to stand by and remain where we were while people from somewhere else ended up in a place where we should have been. We deserve to be there rather than here and that is where we shall be."

He continued: "Over the last four years, the National Mourning Development Squad has performed excellently in competition. The recent tragic death of Diana, and the not-at-all-tragic but equally fortuitous bucket-kicking by Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother have given us the edge over our main rivals the Palestinians."

The Palestinians have dominated the international funereal scene in recent years thanks to their stunning wailing tactics and propensity for hitting themselves over the head. Horace-Morris is not concerned however: "We're back and I'm confident we can knock 'em dead in Greece."

The national funeral squad comprises 800,000 members of the British public who turn out to gawp in a macabre fashion at well-dressed scroungers when one of them dies. It is believed that most of them are from Milton Keynes.

Recent developments in the sport include the throwing of flowers at the cortege, and getting pneumonia by idiotically sleeping on the pavement when you have a perfectly decent house. And in a recent boost to the sport, the government announced Lottery money would be used to purchase tracts of land outside Buckingham Palace to provide extra training facilities.

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