UK faces pundit apocalypse

A leading columnist in fledgling children's magazine, The Guardian, has drawn attention to an epidemic that threatens the very fabric of our society. There is currently, it has been alleged, a world shortage of experts. At time of going to press, this shortage has led to the closure of The Millennium Dome and Africa™. The news has also resulted in the as-yet-unconfirmed explosion of the switchboard at The Royal Society of Pundits, Experts and Connivance Theorists (RSPECT) and the evacuation, on the advice of Health and Safety®, of their run-down offices above Osama's Chip Shoppe. Emergency Services© have evacuated the area around the RSPEC offices and set up a twelve-mile no-go zone complete with multi-coloured cordons say anxious neighbours in Pinner, Middlesex, Greater London.

Sources close to this paper have, on condition of anonymity, suggested that this disaster was inevitable due to the overwhelming demand for experts as a result of the surge in popularity of 24-hour news reports and the public's learned and insatiable requirement for up-to-the-minute stories. Peaches Geldof, aged 6¾, said that all known experts had been overworked to breaking point and that daily travelling from their homes in leafy Kent on the Whitehall, BBC House, Downing Street circuit had become too great a burden. On being informed of the quickly-unfolding events by an invisible ear-piece he always forgets to take out, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News had a mild heart attack and was rushed to hospital, early reports suggest. A spokeslesbian for The Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, reading a hastily prepared statement said: "We can confirm that Jon Snow is here and that he had a mild heart attack."

An anonymous source also told us that her father, the recently beatified Archduke Sir Robert Geldof MD. OBE. MBE. BA(ed.) had been in secret emergency talks with members of U2, Coldplay, David Furnish, Pete Doherty, competition-winner Pope Joseph Ratzinger and the man who bought George Michael's Land Rover on eBay to stage a complimentary concert in aid of the Expert Appeal on the top of Ben Nevis. According to Carol Vorderman, who is required by the Brussels-based 25 commissioners of the European Union (Patent Pending) to remark on all breaking news and who lives on top of Ben Nevis, the proposed concert will be held to draw the public's attention to the plight of the UK's experts.

A new Burberry-check wristband has been designed by Damien Hirst and David Blunkett to appeal to those who require a wristband in order to acknowledge Pain©:, Injustice©, Lance Armstrong and the Suffering©® felt by those in Africa™ and throughout the world each time Pink Floyd re-unite. A premium-rate phone number will be announced for those who wish to pledge their support to the appeal though British Telecom has warned that the number could be similar to that of Science (real name Toby Raincock), the iconic hermaphrodite amputee contestant on Channel 4's Big Brother. Science's public relations representative, the ubiquitous Max Clifford, has beseeched the public to dial with caution as he and his client, despite backing the Expert Appeal "104 per cent", would not wish to be voted out of the Big Brother house accidentally.

A leaked Downing Street dossier, found by a cleaner in a tatty folder on the Central Line near Acton West London, suggests that future Governor of California Tony Blair's government has a contingency plan in place to deal with the catastrophe. The smudged, vindaloo-defiled article notes that experts may have to be flown in from other countries in order to help the UK media cope with the shortage. Easyman Stelios Haji-Ioannou's Easyjet, who recently hit the headlines for sponsoring this year's 1690 Battle of the Boyne Stomp around Belfast's affluent and multi-cultural Ardoyne region, has become the front-runner as carrier of choice for the overseas experts, according to one Downing Street insider based at Luton Airport. The danger with flying in experts from overseas, said a gaffer who works for Question Time and refused to be named, is that cheaper, less qualified, foreign experts might not possess enough expertise to be able to comment on events that occur in Great Britain and Scotland. Some, said Richard Astley, a gaffer for the BBC's Question Time, might not even speak English.

New "tennis sensation" and spunky loser Andrew Murray, refused to be drawn into the escalating war of words after failing to qualify for the Albuquerque U-15 Open saying only: "My Mum's a idiot." No experts were available to comment on the ramifications of the Wimbledon Messiah's cryptic outburst, something that has left his remark open to dangerous conjecture. An automated statement generated from leading children's charity U2 read: "We feel Murray's comments may be harmful to impressionable and marginalised young people, like young Muslims for instance, who might begin to think their Mum is also an idiot." The statement continued with a line from their multi-selling single Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses: "Hey hey, sha-la-la, hey hey."

A report published by The Report Publishers' Council of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland refers to a junior minister's assertion that The Government™ will soon release details of a Taskforce™ assembled to tackle the expert contretemps. Asked to comment on the exclusive-breaking-story-headline-communiqué, BBC's self-obsessed and egomaniacal News Reader Superstar, the illiterate Natasha Kaplinsky gushed: "I have a new diet book with accompanying DVD available on the 15th, I think my fans will love it." Ms. Kaplinsky's comments came while on a break from filming BBC 8's new dancing programme, Celebrity Funambulists.

Showdown talks were expected to last through the night in Westminster as dozens of almost-experts were lined up to complete their expert examination by being grilled by a panel made up of Andrew Marr, Davinia McCall, Gordon Strachan and Howard from the Halifax. The suggestion that the resulting fast-tracking of experts would lead to spurious and unfounded opinion givers and that such measures were a panicked and knee-jerk reaction were met with now-predictable gurning and rolling-of-eyes by New Labour spokeswanker and Labour's Secretary of State for Education and Skillz, Ruth Kelly.

Previously

• 3,000 elite pundits thrust for Basra in search of speculation
• Armchair generals call for reinforcements
• BBC crisis: World likely to stop turning on axis