The Archbishop of Canterbury on… is Bono's one-man show one person too many?

30th May 2025

WAKING up with a hangover so intense the beating of my temples is loud enough to make people start dancing on the lawns beneath my chambers, I reflect on a somewhat disconcerting week.

The story began three days ago, when I suddenly realised I had lost the ability to swear. I had attempted to deliver a sermon but despite all the expletives being clearly written out, I could not give utterance to them. I merely mouthed silently for seconds at a time, to the puzzlement of my congregation.

This was a catastrophe, a neurological malfunction of some sort. I could only manage words such as ‘flipping’, ‘rotter’, or ‘ploppy’ – scarcely adequate for any occasion.

Finally, having been given scans by a Harley Street specialist who subjected me to videos of Keir Starmer, tweets by JK Rowling and the songs of Ed Sheeran to try to induce vituperation, I resorted, against my better judgment, to alternative therapy.

I placed my wellbeing in the hands of a spiritual fellow who offered a variant of Reiki massage. He worked on my head and temples for an hour, quietly chanting a mantra. Finally, success! I felt a rumbling sensation in my cranium and, seconds later, an outpouring of two days of swearing, unleashed like a massive bowel movement: ‘FUCKSHITWANKCOCKKNOBARSEBASTARD…’

On I went in this vein for a full 30 minutes before the tide of filth abated, at which point I felt drained but immeasurably better.

Letting out a brisk ‘COCK!’ this morning to test that my faculties are still intact, I take a light breakfast and peruse a periodical. Therein I read that Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, under questioning from Piers Morgan, stated that the number of children killed by Israel – more than 18,000 – was ‘irrelevant’ and ‘doesn’t matter’, and that criticism of the IDF was a ‘blood libel’.

Fuck me seriously, a ‘blood libel’? No, a libel is when you’ve been falsely fucking accused. See you in fucking court on this one! Nor am I sure the admittedly vile accusation against Jews is the main issue here, considering you’re a spokesman for mass murder shamefully gladhanded by the genocide-enabling, spineless cunts running the UK! If Piers Morgan – Piers fucking Morgan! – shines like a beacon of virtue next to you I’d check I hadn’t got fucking hooves and a red tail!

The Daily Mail revealed that the 53-year-old white British male who drove his car into crowds in Liverpool is a company director who lives in a £300,000 house and is described by friends as a ‘fantastic guy’.

Really? Oh well, that’s practically alright then! If his house is worth a respectable £300,000 there must have been some terrible fucking misunderstanding! Tell you what, given that it was Liverpool fans, it was probably their fault somehow! The devious scally bastards were probably throwing themselves in front of the moving car of a respected local white entrepreneur looking for an insurance payout! You utter fucking twats! With every fucking new edition you sink further and further down the sewers of tabloid fucking turddom!

Elon Musk has exited the US government, having openly criticised Donald Trump’s ‘big and beautiful’ tax and spending bill.

Hahaha! Tech bro finally realises what a disastrous lump of cunt his big orange mate is! As the ancient Chinese proverb says: ‘The unwise man who pitches his tent in the anus of a total twat will soon be drenched in excrement.’ Well, that’s you finished, Elon! Why don’t you go back to your giant SpaceX shed, build a rocket and fuck off to Jupiter, eh? Or get 40 feet up and explode, which is more fucking likely at the moment!

Finally, this week sees the screening of a film version of Bono’s one-man show, Stories Of Surrender, a ‘rock star confessional’ by filmmaker Andrew Dominik. Shot in black and white, it consists of the U2 frontman relating anecdotes from his life, including tales of Live Aid and political campaigning.

Fuck this one right up the shitter! I’d rather watch a no-man show, just a single fucking chair on a stage in complete fucking darkness, than this dreadful fucking ego project! ‘Confessional’? Will you be confessing you haven’t paid your taxes properly in fucking years? ‘Political campaigning’? Anything, a word, a peep, to say on Gaza? Fuck off, you sunglassed sack of breaking fucking wind!

Meet racist tweet martyr Lucy Connolly. Meet your next prime minister

29th May 2025

By Abigail Pennson, our reasonable, plain-speaking middle-class columnist who voted 422 times for Yuval Raphael

VACLAV Havel. Aung San Suu Kyi. Nelson Mandala. All prisoners who became their country’s leader. I am privileged to present the next: Mrs Lucy Connolly.

You know the name, of course. Since her wrongful imprisonment for ‘inciting racial hatred’ – tweeting while heartbroken, in plain English – she’s all the nation talks about. I hear her name even when I’m alone in the room.

Her bravery. Her moral courage. How she managed to sum up how the whole nation was feeling, from the £2 car park at John O’Groats to the £10.99 Land’s End sign photo opportunity, in that measured tweet. And her unjust imprisonment.

Even in the darkness of the political prisoner’s wing – she tells me Keir removed the lightbulb personally – her goodness shone.

“I’m just a humble wife and mother, and childminder, and good neighbour, and Tory voter and I have two direct debits to charity. Why did they do this?” she asked, rattling the chains that bound her to the wall.

Why indeed? Why, because she sent one tweet about burning down hotels with migrants inside when, coincidentally, people were attempting to do just that? They didn’t need to read the tweet to get the idea. It was in the very air.

She will be freed, by the courts or by a new storming of the Bastille. She will be carried high by her countrymen. From there the vacant throne of the Conservative Party will call to her, and Keir will face his nemesis in a general election.

“Prepare for office,” I tell her, as her innate righteousness causes her to glow, levitate and heal small wounds. “Downing Street will soon be yours.”

And her first speech as prime minister? I for one hope it is: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f**king hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”