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The Archbishop of Canterbury on… the BBC's mysterious spontaneous combustion in Belfast

WAKING with a hangover so excruciating that only by injecting coffee directly into my eyeballs can I mitigate its ill effects, I look back on the start of the World Cup and what it might hold for the church. 

As ever, my staff were pushing me to come up with initiatives to boost church attendance and wondered if some sort of tie-in with the current tournament might be expedient. And so, after a few moments’ thought, I came up with the following text, to be disseminated across the land by leaflet and electronic communication.

‘Rather chew your own gonads than watch this fucking World Cup, dominated by the joy-sucking, double-cunt duo of Trump and Infantino? I mean, 48 fucking teams, what the fuck? Then don’t watch the matches, come to fucking church instead! Don’t worry, no prayers or any of that shit, we’ll just hang. Snacks provided but please bring a bottle.’

The impact of this invitation was immediate. Rather than watch Mexico versus South Africa, Britons turned out in droves to their local church, with standing room only in the aisles, the liquor flowing freely and sonorous chants of ‘Fuck Trump’ ringing out across churchyards up and down the country. 

Gratified, I take a light breakfast and peruse a periodical. Therein, I read that actor Gwyneth Paltrow has been criticised for an advert for ‘51 Park’, apartments for sale in Herzliya, Israel, a city established on land from which Palestinians were expelled in 1948. 

Jesus on a fucking cuntstick, all of this makes your fucking exhortations to women to shove eggs up their twats to boost their ‘feminine energy’ look like a load of fucking goop about nothing! Shilling for a fucking apartheid state, in the week they added to the mounting pile of corpses by shooting to death a baby? If only your grinning, super-rich vapidity amounted to nothing more than a mild health risk for anyone stupid enough to take your fucking prescriptions. But now you’re an influencer for genocide, which is a low even for fucking influencers! Just fuck off to hell, you terminally fucking dreadful human being!

In its reporting on the attacks on immigrants in Belfast, the BBC described houses ‘going on fire’ as angry right-wing mobs rioted. 

‘Going on fire’? What the fuck is that? It turns out the odd phrasing is just Ulster English, but you mean by sheer coincidence? They spontaneously combusted for no reason while a mob of fucking racist idiots whipped up by the ubercunt Musk just happened to be standing innocently outside? Shove your fucking passive voice right up your arse, you overbearing liability of a fucking broadcaster! They were torched, egged on by the sort of people you’ve been bafflingly promoting since you first decided to make Question Time the Nigel Farage Hour! 

Meanwhile, the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson has taken the time to berate the family of the attempted beheading victim for behaving like ‘no normal shocked family’ after they called for calm rather than retribution against immigrants.

Gee, it’s always the ones you most expect, isn’t it? In your ever-worsening drift from soft liberal broadsheet commentator to far-right shit-stirrer you have to earn your pieces of silver with toxicity like this. Do you have any friends from the old days left, Allison? Any family that still talks to you as you use your platform to encourage fascist violence and fucking arson against families and children? I hope you fucking choke on the fucking small talk you make at the next Spectator garden party, you evil, trolling fucking travesty!

Finally, armed forces minister Al Carns has quit, hot on the heels of defence secretary John Healey, after a row about insufficient military spending.

Fucking hell, no one would like to see Keir Starmer’s bollocks held to the fire more than me but please, don’t bring him down over this, not over a bunch of fucking chancers who’ll no doubt go on to work for the fucking arms trade! Healey was looking for the UK, this fucking irrelevant, tepid little rock, to boost its military spending by 40 per cent, making us the biggest military spender in the world after America, China and Russia. Fucking why? It’s not the fucking 19th century, the globe isn’t mostly painted imperial red! Britannia doesn’t rule the fucking waves, it barely rules its fucking self! It would make fuck all difference, except to a bunch of corrupt contractors, if we had a fucking military spending budget of 15 pence!

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Mash True Crime: 'How could a crime like this happen in a nice middle-class English town, and not, I don't know, Detroit?'

Podcaster Jade Grimes doggedly investigates the latest crimes despite her complete lack of qualifications to do so and police pleas to stop

THIS week’s story is so chilling it’ll make you want to swap your summery Starbucks Frappuccino for a piping hot Starbucks Grande Mochaccino. Remember to use my discount code CRIME for ten per cent off your next coffee at any participating Starbucks (not including Scotland or drive thrus).

You’ll know that I try to spotlight cases that don’t get a lot of attention – things like pretty white women going missing in mysterious circumstances. I try to avoid anything too obvious like hate crimes or police brutality, because I know the BBC will cover them.

But this case, though admittedly different from what I normally cover (and a bit boring), really grabbed hold of me, because it happened just 100 miles from where I live.

I think we all assume that murders happen mainly in America. It’s really easy to commit a murder there, and far more socially acceptable. I often thank my lucky stars I was born in Kingston upon Thames and not Killtown upon Mississippi.

Our story this week is of Mr Nathan Muir, who was found dead in his garden in April, having been stabbed. The prime suspect? His wife, Carolyn, who had recently found out about an affair he’d been having with their daughter’s nanny.

Here comes the bombshell. This salacious story didn’t happen in Los Angeles, but in the English village of Sweppley in Sussex.

When I Google image searched Sweppley, I thought I’d see a gangland filled with burnt-out cars and crack dens. Instead, I saw that they have a David Lloyd. Nathan was an estate agent, and Carolyn had a catering business. How could people so upstanding be driven to become a murder victim and murderer, respectively? The British mind boggles that the two of them couldn’t just sit down and discuss their problems over a nice cup of tea.

Naturally, such a bizarre and unnatural story gives you pause. I bet a lot of you, like me, have got questions. What was the motive? If it was the affair, why would Carolyn mind, when Nathan had had at least three other affairs before? How did Carolyn even get her hands on the cake knife thought to have killed him?

Such obvious inconsistencies make you wonder what else the police might have got wrong. Is Nathan actually dead, or did he sustain a simple injury that didn’t even require a trip to A&E? For all we know, he’s in the Dordogne right now, and the mutilated body on the slab is actually that of a New Jersey drug dealer, flown here in error, then dressed in corduroy.

True crime fans, I ask you – what seems more likely?

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