Remember this stuff? we don't

In the beginning was the Blip. The Blip became the Crunch, which became the Crisis, which begat the Panic, whereupon the drooling keepers of your sweaty farthings duly cacked their pants and skedaddled bowlegged into the dustbowls of our financial nowheres. And now, just when you thought that buying them all back with your taxable salaries was a risky stategy, there's more. The Global Federation of Market Analysts, having run out of days they can call "black", have now fallen foul of Race Watchdog Tsar Johnville "Queasy" Winton, who deplores the irresponsible race-heavy connotations of the Financial Sector's derogatory foolmongering. And quite right too. Similar attempts to rebrand global losses as "Orange Wednesday" and "The Great Purple Prang of Last Weekend While I was Busy Selling My Yacht" are lame attempts at best and deserve only our scorn. Say it loud: I'm skint and I'm, er, no actually I'm just skint. Is it cos I is like skint? Yes.

Darling, you made it...

Invoking the spirit of Andrew Marvell, had he worn a white lab coat with a breast pocket full of biros, particle physicist Berndt Vordelmeyer skipped into the CERN offices this morning with a spring in his step and whistling through his smirking spotty gob. Amid the mumblings of his colleagues, Vordelmeyer has exploited the apocalyptic tone of recent news reports and succeeded in his amorous overtures to one Birgit Johanssen, an impressionable columnist for the Geneva Examiner and regular visitor to the €5bn facility.

And then I said...

"I hef been getting really annoyink emails for months saying that our experiments are going to bring about ze end of ze vorld", explained our Large Hadron Lothario. "So I get to thinkink, aha, this could work to a guy's advantage. I got up my courage vis a quick peach schnapps, and Ze metaphysical poetry presented some difficulty, but I am happy to say that I effected a hot collision with a pair of supermassive Bosons, and I did it in less than 0.4x10^-43 seconds. Ha! Results! Big Bang, Nein?"

A coy Fraulein Johanssen was spotted straightening herself with some difficulty next to an array of high-powered electromagnets on the southern side of the chamber, but declined to comment, looking puzzled that the ground beneath her feet was still visibly intact.

The offending driver aid, this morning (courtesy Beaulieu Motor Museum)

Controversy rattled around the Monza Paddock like a bad cough today as ITV F1 commentator Martin Brundle was handed the coveted Formula One World Crown he was narrowly and cruelly denied lots and lots of years ago. The governing board of F1 has been sent a floppy disc containing evidence that Brundle's contemporaries and rivals (Icy Finn Stig Harkonnen and fiery Ferrari ace Claudio Monteverdi) were up to some very fishy capers indeed, utilising "cylinders" and "gears" within their engines to generate power and thereby confer an advantage out of keeping with the spirit of the competition.

Furthermore, Vice Director of the F1 Sporting Conglomerate Gus O' Shea commented, "Once we found a computer capable of reading the disc, it became quite clear from the data that Stig Harkonnen finished the race in a different car, having screwed the pooch at turn twelve and disappeared behind the trees with his nozzle disconnected. It's this sort of extra-curricular behaviour which threatens to bring the sport into disrepute."

Roof Rack gave extra downforce but failed to secure the weight-distributing suitcase ballast demanded by the FIA. Clamp him, Ref!

Brundle, who now faces the intriguing task of interviewing himself on the grid before next week's Antarctica Grand Prix, was unavailable for comment; but already rumours are rife of a triumphant return to the track, just to show these pasty-faced little snotnoses how it should be done. What are his chances, ITV team? "Well it's a big ask, and for sure he don't have the weight advantage what the Red Bulls has. But never say never in this game, Formula One's a cruel mistress, as Jenson found out when he was poked up his end going into Parabolica this morning" (continues in similar vein for some time).

STOP PRESS: In a remarkable u-turn, Martin Brundle has had his 1992 title cruelly revoked again due to some late evidence which turned up in the harrassed race steward's duvet this morning. It transpires that Brundle was in possession of, and is recorded actually using, a device known as a "steering wheel" which, in the words of former F1 commentator Murray Walker "Really isn't cricket you know."

For pedants, the official version of events.