As the curtain closed on an outstandingly successful London Olympics, Britain's spoof news writers, starved of ready targets by a brilliant home performance, have expressed relief that at least the footballers did something hilariously shit by exiting the tournament on penalties in the quarter finals, just like every England team since some time back in the Bronze Age.
'We were facing a disaster,' admitted 'Waylandsmithy', a regular contributor to the UK's leading satirical news website. 'British athletes, cyclists, rowers and sailers not only won a stack of medals, they were also articulate, gracious and everything good about multi-cultural Britain. Somehow we even managed the impossible task of producing better opening and closing ceremonies than a dictatorship with limitless cheap labour. Thank goodness the footballers stayed true to type.'
On the same night that Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah all won gold in the Olympic Stadium, Ryan Giggs managed to drag himself off his brother's wife for just long enough to lead Team GB to a deliriously awful draw with South Korea. To make the inevitable denouement even better, the decisive penalty miss came from squirrel-brained Chelsea benchwarmer Daniel Sturridge, who then stalked off the pitch like a petulant toddler that had been refused a fifth ice cream.
Satire analysts agreed that the combination of predictability, schadenfreude and loathing inherent in the bling-adoring group sex addicts' superb failure could tide the country over for just long enough until Parliament reassembles in September. Had the current tide of euphoria over Olympic success continued unabated for a few more weeks, the consequences for satirical news websites might have been disastrous.
'When you see 80,000 people applauding a Saudi woman for just competing at all, when Yorkshire wins more golds than Australia, when an American and an Iranian embrace on the podium, what is there left to laugh about?' said another would-be satirist 'Oxbridge'. 'I did start on a sub about Andy Murray turning from Scottish to British when he won a gold medal, but it didn't really pan out. I imagine that's probably been done before, come to think of it.'
[digitally remastered for closing ceremony, which won't be shit, even with the Spice Girls]
