The World’s Financial Crisis was dramatically halted yesterday thanks to the intervention of a drunken man in a pub with an analysis of simplistic logical brilliance that put the markets right back on track. Terence Bould, 43, also known as ‘Tel the Smell’ due to his occupation as a sewage engineer, was returning from the toilets at shortly after 10pm in his local pub in East London when he proclaimed that the current financial meltdown ‘was all a load of bollocks anyway – as it’s just made up numbers and shit’.

Terence Bould has no formal economic qualifications, and has never worked in the City, or in any area of banking or finance, making his searing insight all the more spectacular. A journalist from the Financial Times happened to overhear the revelation and immediately phoned his editor with the news. The London market rallied spectacularly after the front page hit the news stands and when Wall Street woke up to read the new economic theory, European and Eastern markets were already soaring in the face of renewed optimism.

However, confidence wobbled the following lunchtime when in the same pub, Tel’s friend Kev was overheard saying ‘All this massive share boom though, none of it’s real. It’s all just figures in a computer somewhere innit?’ and panic selling brought shares tumbling again.