The Dead Synapses Society

The incumbent of St. Christopher’s a small church in Norris Green, Liverpool has stirred up a storm of protest over his allegations that the increase in cremation is nothing more than a cynical smokescreen to cover up a grave shortage of cemetery plots in the UK

The Right Rev. Harvey Botham told us that the problem was so acute that his parishioners were having to wait up to three years just to get on to the burial waiting list at St. Christopher's. "This is a national scandal!" protested the pugnacious parson. "Do people have to die before they can be buried? If the good Lord had intended us to burn our dead why did he make us out of 70% water?"

I asked the Reverend to explain.

"The Church cannot bury the critical shortage of cemetery plots by digging up anachronistic aphorisms from the Book of Common Prayer," he told us. "I am no longer prepared to keep silent about the vile practises of 'double parking' and 'stiff swopping' that have made my life a living hell. The Church's new 'ashes to ashes' campaign is the last straw."

"Double parking?" I asked.

"The Church describe it as 'stratified culture," explained the embattled ecclesiastic, "but whatever you call it, packing three stiffs into the same plot is dead wrong."
"And 'stiff swopping?"
"Digging up the deceased the moment the grieving relatives have departed and unceremoniously dumping the corpse in some industrial landfill, or using it to stiffen the foundations of a motorway flyover in Formby. I won't be a party to these grave deceptions any longer."

Monumental conspiracy
"These practices have been going on for years," continued the controversial cleric, "But no one will dare talk about it. Undertakers are making a fortune from burying up to five people in the same plot only to dump them after a few hours, or months, to make room for more. Make no bones about it," he added, "I shall not rest until I have disinterred this evil plot."

A spokesperson for the British Association of Funeral Directors, Mr William Hurse, was tight-lipped when I interviewed him at his offices in Yew Tree Grove, Eltham. "The Reverend Harvey Botham is a casket-case with an over-active imagination," explained the smooth-talking inhumationist. "Last year he claimed that two Nuneaton Nuns were topping up the poor box by displaying the charms of their novices on the Internet via a live webcam installed in their dormitory."

"Then you deny there is a grave cemetery crisis in this country?" I asked.
"Absolutely."
"Then the £200 subsidy you get from the Government for every body you don't bury has nothing to do with the dramatic rise in cremations?"

"No comment," retorted Mr Hurse.

"What about the Church's new policy of 'double parking?"
"Never heard of it."
"Stiff swopping?"
"Look!" snapped the surly mortician, "People are just more environmentally conscious now. Land is too valuable a resource to waste on the dead. The Church is simply responding to the Government’s new policy on environmentally sound sepulture."
"New policy?" I asked.
"Er I didn't say that. You didn't hear that from me. Sorry, I've got an urgent dentist's appointment, must dash."
We asked the Department of Health about the new policy the red-faced funeral director had been so reluctant to discuss.

"It is our policy not to discuss Government policy in relation to the department's policies on the policy of interment and the disposal of the deceased," commented an unidentified spokes person. No help there, then.

Dead shocking
A conspiracy of silence or a silent conspiracy? I decided to send our reporter to turn over the unsavoury underbelly of the British undertaking business.
Partly shaded by a six-lane motorway, Ever Glades Memorial Garden is typical of the dozens of British cemeteries he visited. Beneath the graveyard's verdant lawns, hundreds of bodies are double or even triple parked, or buried in the wrong graves.

"I feel like nobody cares," said Sarah, a winsome waitress from Epping who admits to being constantly depressed and preoccupied with death. "They double-parked Colin with that slut Monica from McDonalds. I mean how would you like it if your husband had to spend eternity between the thighs of a woman with silicone implants who never waxed?"

Her friend, Michelle Fifer, never found her husband. She says her search for him is destroying her second marriage. She can't sleep and has stopped having sex with her next door neighbour. In many ways Michelle and Sarah are similar: they are both women. Although they have new partners they refuse to let go of the one who died. They text each other, go for long walks, wash nappies together and complain about scratchy underwear. Although both mourning mums have received over £700,000 in damages from the owners of the cemetery, they insist that the luxury home and motor yacht they own in Marbella was a gift from an anonymous well-wisher.

There you have it. The crazed conspiracy theory of an eccentric English Vicar or the callous policy of an uncaring Government who will stop at nothing to rob its citizens even after death.

Authors of a controversial report, published today by the IAFF (International Association of Fish Fanciers), surveyed approximately 151,357 British males between the ages of sixteen and fifty-two who regularly ate fish-based products. Over two thirds of the men exhibited marked female characteristics such as periodic moodiness, low self-esteem and increased sensitivity to personal criticism. 66% admitted to indecisiveness and obsessive concern about their appearance, while more than three-quarters said they were very worried about their weight and broke down in tears if their authority was questioned.

The report has been given the seal of approval by the Ministry of Health who admitted to The Happening Place, that the findings had 'serious implications for future generations because anything more than a moderate change in a man's sexual organs makes it much harder to reproduce.'
Their fears were echoed by one anonymous Sales Manager from Stratford, who took time out from trying on his wife's underwear to talk to us.
"I knew something was up when I started having multiple orgasms every time I turned on the water jets in the Jacuzzi."
"But surely that's a good thing?" we asked.

"Not when your willy is smaller than a jelly baby and starting to turn inside out, it isn't," he sobbed tearfully.
His tragic story is not unusual. More than a third of the men surveyed had experienced a 57% increase in the size of their breasts, ninety-eight had begun lactating, and 9,463 had bought panty-liners. Of the remainder, over half were involved in long-term homosexual relationships, or had started hanging around public toilets.

"There is sufficient evidence of harm that the Government is considering restricting sales of fish and fish-products to women in order to control this devastating threat to male sexuality," commented Dr Michael Dabb, the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency, which monitors environmental pollution throughout the UK, said the sex changes were the result of fish being exposed to treated sewage which contained high levels of female hormones as a result of women taking the contraceptive pill.

The irony of the situation was not lost on the good doctor who added bitterly:
"We invented the fucking pill so we could have a whale of a time shagging women with impunity but now the bloody things are all over the place we're in danger of becoming infertile!"

"Sounds like a case of cod moving in a mysterious way to us," we commented.

"Very funny," retorted the doctor. "You'll be laughing on the other side of your face when every bloke is hung like a gerbil and can only get it up once a month to fire off a few blanks into his wife's panties."

"We thought they already did," we replied.

As we all know, we are all facing a global recession, but so bad is the downturn, that the Thong industry is in a state of collapse! And some analysts are predicting a tidal wave of unemployment in the Far East if not a tsunami of joblessness, as millions of Chinese are forced to seek alternative work as offshore phone sex operatives.

"This is a catastrophe," a spokes peperson for Anne Sommers Lingerie sobbed into her Macchiato when I interviewed her at the top of a huge mountain of unsold 'Teeny Weeny Strings'. "Sales have collapsed by nearly 200% in the past year and some of our stores may have to close if we can't get women's bottoms back into thongs."
"And how do you plan to do that?" I asked.

"Stop chavettes buying them!" snapped the spokes person. "It's the association with teenage chavs who flaunt their thongs that's caused this backlash among decent women."
"Chavettes?"

"Sexually aggressive, thong-wearing, 14 yr old harlots with filthy cigarettes dangling from their sneering lips who terrorize communities with their violence, swearing and droves of illegitimate kids," explained the spokes person. "One cannot go out any more without encountering gangs of these disgusting teenagers dressed in hooded tracksuits and Burberry baseball caps on every street corner, openly flaunting their thongs at complete strangers. Is it any wonder that ordinary women are sick and tired of being associated with these sluts and are looking for less revealing alternatives, such as the sensible cotton bloomers favoured by their grandmothers? Unless we ban the sale of thongs to these hooligans the whole lingerie industry will go down the toilet!"

Sadly, there is not much chance of a ban being imposed upon what some experts predict will soon be the dominant culture in this country, as a leading sociologist was at pains to point out us. "The insidious signs of chav 'culture' are all around us," boomed Professor Strungfondel. "Empty cider bottles and condom packets litter our streets, along with half-eaten burgers and discarded thongs. Short of enforced sterilisation, these vermin will continue to breed like rabbits, smoking, drinking, fighting and fornicating their way into every strata of society."

I steered the professor back to the subject in hand by asking him if he thought the drop in the sale of thongs was due to their association with chavs.
"No question about it," he shouted. "Any decent woman who wears one of these filthy things risks being branded a slut and a moron. At the height of the thong explosion, in 2003, sales of strings accounted for approximately 61.28% of all panty sales, but that figure has now fallen to below 10%. It is only a matter of time before thongs join split-crotch panties and suspender belts as a niche item only worn by sex workers, elderly clergymen and transsexual Reality TV show contestants."

The irony of this was not lost on 'D-list' celebrity, Clamidia Almada, a transsexual Reality TV show contestant who asked us not to reveal her name, but failed to send us the enormous cheque we demanded. Clami reminded me that thongs had first been worn by strippers and American trailer trash until they won respectability when Britney Spears flaunted one on stage. “Showing your thong is so five minutes ago,” said the former Big Brother winner.

"So what do you wear?" I asked.

"Well..actually I'm not wearing anything," he giggled.

I politely declined Clami’s invitation to verify her claims and beat a hasty retreat before the walking tit-scaffold could carry out her threat to 'slip into something more uncomfortable.'
The dramatic decline in the sales of thongs has also refuelled the concerns of many health professionals who have repeatedly warned of the dangers associated with the wearing of tight underwear. Top model, Elle Macpherson, 41, who launched her own range of sensible undies earlier this month, told me: “Thongs are not only uncomfortable but unsanitary and dangerous. Women who persist in wearing them are risking infection and infertility."

Her warning was echoed by Dr Butholin, a senior gynaecologist at the University of London, who told us: "There are now a number of recognised medical conditions associated with the extended wearing of thongs."
"Extended?" I queried. "You mean for long periods of time?"
"No, I mean extended. The material stretches and extends into the anterior annulus superficialis, causing irritation, infection and ultimately, death."

"DEATH!?" I exclaimed.

"OK, I lied about that. But gusset chafe is no picnic for the thousands of women who come to me, I assure you. Nor are chronic constipation, haemorrhoids, ring sting and rectovaginal thrush"
"Anal thrush, doctor? Is there such a condition."
"No, but telling women they have it is the surest way I know to get them to let me sedate them while I insert a very large, organic suppository up their puburectalis maximus."

"Organic suppository, doctor?"

"Well I call it a suppository so as not to alarm them when the suppository discharges its um, liquid contents."
"Are you telling me that having unprotected anal sex with your female patients cures them of these distressing conditions?"

"Well, no but it seems to put them off wearing thongs for a while."