Daily Mail in New Embarrassment

Dismal family newspaper the Daily Mail has become wrapped up in the duvet of controversy after launching yet another anti-immigration campaign, this time based on part of a misheard conversation.

The Mail's editor, Jeremy Torree, was in a lift with two people who looked well dressed and therefore made credible sources. They were discussing something they'd heard from someone else and Mr Torree was so appalled that he splashed it all over the news room.

The two conversationees had actually been discussing a group of migrants who were alleged to have smuggled wine into the UK illegally as part of the deal they made with some French gangsters. A serious story but not the story reported by the Mail. Their exact words (the transcript was loaned to us by the CIA's Britain Monitoring Unit and is (c) 2004 CIA Entertainment Inc) were "Asylum seekers smuggled in bottles of wine".

"CHECK YOUR LOCAL OFF LICENSE FOR FOREIGN SCUM" yelled the headline the next morning. Over the course of seven bitter pages, Mr Torree used a number of pseudonyms to rage against the tide of foreign midgets being smuggled into the UK inside alleged bottles of foreign plonk. The editor called upon the good people of Britain to go to their wine cellars, super markets and any near by tramps to make sure these enemies of the nation are shipped back where they came from.

The mistake was uncovered shortly afterwards when one of the two men heard in the lift turned out to be a printer repair man called in to fix something in the editorial office. Later editions of the paper saw the above drivel replaced with some other drivel about Judy Finnegan's thighs and how dare she be a woman of her age.