the dailymash

Ministers want to exploit the full potential of Britain's worldwide reputation for potentially dangerous eccentrics who loiter outside shops, clutching kitchen utensils and muttering about the fish-headed ones.

A spokesman for the department for employment and learning said: "After the success of our scheme to pay genuinely mentally ill people £15 a week to take their pills, something went 'ping!'.

"You can never have enough oddballs. So why not take people out of the dole queues and pay them to act a prawn ring short of a buffet for eight hours a day? They are a huge tourist draw and enrich the country's cultural fabric."

Former farm manager Roy Hobbs has recently taken up a £24,000 a year position as lunacy facilitator at Swindon's Brunel Centre.

He said: "My job is to sit in a wheelchair wearing one of those comedy hats that looks like it's got a knife through it, brandishing a wooden lizard at passers-by in a way that's simultaneously threatening and pitiful.

"Once a week I get to work from home calling local radio stations and asking the presenters in a very loud voice if they want to come in my helicopter so I can cut their hair."

Meanwhile ex-cab driver Wayne Hayes now makes up to £80 per day as a freelance 'square peg' for Birmingham City Council.

Mr Hayes said: "My main role is to go into Habitat-type shops and pull my tracksuit bottoms down. I then wander around with my arse and balls on display, nonchalantly examining curtain rails like I haven't a care in the world."

He added: "It's a great job but it's difficult to switch off and I often catch myself naked from the waist down at family functions."