Channel 4 breaks English language

The word "celebrity" has been deleted from the Oxford English Dictionary after it snapped last night. Stretched to breaking point over the last five years, the inclusion of Jeremy Edwards — a man whose own mother professes not to have heard of him — in the latest Big Brother household meant the end for the abuse-ravaged noun. Lexicographers found the remnants of the word in a skip in Shoreditch this morning, but were only able to save the vowels. Until further notice, the word "fame-suckler" will be used for all supposedly well-known people, from the omnipresent to the talentless nobody who once shagged someone on Blue Peter.

The North of England's "Asian Tsunami Solidarity Weekend" has been hailed as tremendous success by participants who saw roads closed, power lines brought down and general chaos reign after severe flooding hit the region. "Fantastic, just fantastic," said one Carlisle man who watched helpless as his mother-in-law was swept away by the torrent. "All we need now is an outbreak of cholera and we're away," he added with visible enthusiasm.

An unnamed US man will not receive sexual favours from his wife until he recants his assertion that Oliver Stone's Alexander the Great is "not as bad as the critics say", our American media bureau reports. The film has been roundly slammed as one of the worse in cinema history, but the 27-year-old New Yorker apparently told his partner that he "quite enjoyed" the $150m epic and that "Angelina Jolie is reasonably plausible" in the Mother of all Flops™. The unfortunate individual's wife told The Rockall Times: "He ain't even getting no handjob until he falls into line on this one. If it looks like a dawg and it smells like a dawg then it's a dawg."

In related news, the US submarine which ran aground over the weekend close to the Pacific island of Guam is rumoured to have struck a reef as a result of unrest among the 137-strong crew following a screening of said Alexander the Great. The nuclear-powered USS San Francisco was mercifully not damaged during the incident which apparently involved an attempt by some crewmembers to gain access to the vessel's weapons' systems in order to "send Oliver Stone a cinematic critique he'll never forget". Several sailors were injured during the fracas, including one who suffered an apoplectic fit of rage at the lamentable standard of the film's screenplay.

The UN has declared itself ready to act "decisively" after a Sudanese peace deal between Muslims and Christians to end the 50-year civil war in the sun-kissed African paradise failed to encompass the war-torn Darfur region. Warning that the violence there — which has seen thousands of Christians displaced or killed by Islamic militias — "must stop right now or else", UN supremo Kofi Annan expressed himself poised to deliver a damning report to the UN Security Council which would in turn look into a crisis power lunch "within the next twelve months or so" leading to the possibility of a strongly-worded letter to the Sudanese government threatening to blockade imports of Sunny D, microwaveable oven chips and other essential supplies "for up to three days" if it did not comply "within two years" to the request that it "try an desist right away from killing people". Annan added: "My patience with the Sudanese government is fast running out. There's gonna be trouble, let me tell you. No, really..."