Torres fee obviously adjusted for inflation, claims Chelsea

FERNANDO Torres’ £50m transfer fee was clearly adjusted to allow for inflation, Chelsea insisted last night.

As the club’s new signing made a debut as consequential as an overdue gas bill in Hiroshima, manager Ian Ancelotti stressed Britain’s rampant inflation rate meant the striker’s price tag was actually just £1.75 in ‘last year’s money’.

He added: “Britain is in a Zimbabwean-style inflationary spiral where you need a wheelbarrow full of £100 notes to buy a loaf of bread or a Spaniard.

“So if you apply Keynesian theory and close your eyes for 90 minutes you can see that Fernando was actually outstanding value.

“Next year I shall probably have to pay £120m for a bag of sugar or a Wayne Rooney.”

Meanwhile as Ancelotti and Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish worked on their excuses for spunking away the education budget of Malawi, research suggests the money may have been better spent on their stadium car parks.

Footballologist Wayne Hayes said: “Both Liverpool and Chelsea would sell 15% more season tickets if they could increase their capacity to 2000 cars each.

“Then Fernando Torres, David Luiz and Andy Carroll could stay at home and play with their wheelbarrows.”

He added: “It is an issue that should really be taken up with the game’s governing body, but it’s just so difficult to get an appointment with a shadowy Chinese betting syndicate.”

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Multiculturalism fails as Mrs Gerving gets annoyed with Mrs Patel

BRITISH multiculturalism officially collapsed yesterday after Mrs Patel neglected to return a Catherine Cookson book belonging to her white neighbour, Margaret Gerving.

Mrs Gerving, a retired headmistress from Guildford, had leant The Bondage of Love, which details the tribulations of a plucky working-class girl who falls for a man who may not be all that he seems, to Mrs Patel after she said she wanted a good book to read on the plane to Cyprus.

Four weeks after returning from her holiday, Mrs Patel still has the book, despite being well aware that Mrs Gerving wants to pass it on to someone else.

Mrs Gerving said: “It’s just not very thoughtful. Although personally I think that where she comes from, they don’t value manners like we do, not really.”

She added: “I’ll tell you something for nothing, I’m not lending her anything again. And she’s not getting her whisk back in a hurry, either.”

Mother-of-two Mrs Patel said: “I’d completely forgotten about the book, and she hadn’t asked for it. Although I wondered why she hadn’t been around this week, wasting my time when I’m trying to do some housework.

“I was actually going to drop her book around, and some Hello! magazines that I’ve finished with but if she’s going to be all funny about it then I won’t bother. No, I’ll wait until I get my whisk back, thank you very much.

“And I use that whisk a lot.”

A BNP spokesman said: “There’s hardly enough Catherine Cookson books in this country for white people, never mind Mrs Patel, who probably also wants Sharia law.”

But semi-professional Guardian reader Julian Cook said: “Mrs Gerving’s small-minded rhetoric is inexcusable in 21st-century Britain, even coming from an elderly and innately pugnacious woman like herself. As a member of the white male hegemony I just want to reach out to Mrs Patel and say – I live in Hackney of my own volition, and I ‘get’ bhangra.”

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