St Neots Citizen

Town Council leader Derek Miles has revealed that he is not, in fact, going insane, but has been a victim of American Soap Syndrome, or ASS.

Various news sources including the Citizen have carried stories recently that cast Cllr Miles in a “delicate” frame of mind, his behaviour growing increasingly bizarre. But following investigation by professor Holly Oaks, of Dallas University, it has been discovered that the crazy antics of the past few months were down to Miles channelling the spirit of his own fictional evil twin brother.

The Syndrome, so called because of the proliferation of evil twin brothers on popular cheesy Channel 5 import Sunset Beach, can cause a victim to unwittingly become their own malicious sibling, despite the fact they are not actually a twin. Generally the evil half of the equation takes over the sufferer’s life, often with the aim of relieving them of all their money.

“In this unusual case,” said Prof. Oaks, “Councillor Miles’ evil twin spirit aimed to end his political career through a series of manic episodes and increasingly disjointed letters to local papers. It is possible that the twin was working in cahoots with another local councillor such as Bob Farms, of the fictional Hardwick parish; but it is equally likely that he was aiming for his own unexplained outcome.”

No documented cases of ASS exist in the UK, but it does proliferate on the other side of the pond. “Generally,” continued the professor, “ASS manifests itself in one of the following three ways. There is of course evil twin channelling. Then there is Amnesia, where a person is apparently dead but reappears months or years later with no memory of who they are. This consequence of the syndrome is believed to be a strain which developed in Australia in the mid-nineties. Finally there is what we call Disguising, where someone leaves the area and then returns with a moustache, a wig and a just-about-plausible back story about who they are - and often turn out to be a ghost anyway.”

Councillor Miles was said to be overjoyed that the syndrome had finally been diagnosed. “Apparently,” he said, “It’s not like the flu where you can think to yourself, ‘hey I have this problem’ and go and bother your local GP. Because you are becoming your own evil twin you think everything’s perfectly normal.”

“The treatment was awful though,” continued Miles, now fully recovered. “They had to delete E4 - and E4+1 - and all the Channel 5 channels from my Freeview box so that I didn’t inadvertently catch a rerun of Dynasty or the OC. Then I had to watch EastEnders constantly for three weeks, as nothing so absurd ever occurs on Albert Square.”

Miles was looking forward to returning to writing his own incoherent letters to the Town Crier, which now often only features correspondence from councillors on its letters page; and to keeping an eye on exactly how much money the Town Centre Manager was giving away to people he had never met.

Diddieer Droggy, African footballer and Chelski superstar is transferring to St Neots Football club.

The shock news came after St Ives Town Council allowed the tradition of coin throwing at children to continue, and St Neots town council has hinted it may follow suit after emergency meetings with the owners of St Neots Town FC.

When interviewed Droggy said, “It’s a dream come true.” When asked if he was referring to the huge move to St Neots FC, Droggy replied “No! Being able to throw coins at the children in the crowd, of course.”

St Neots’ manager said, “The deal is as good as done, all we need to do now is agree personal terms and a bag of coins at each corner flag.”

Radio NeotsFM, the town’s flagship broadcaster, has been lambasted after two of its top presenters played a prank on local AmDram comedy favourite Jack Andrews.

103 year old Mr Andrews, who played Italian pot-washer Giovanni in the seminal series of Priory Centre productions “The Hotel Where Nothing Ever Went Right”, suffered a constant barrage of abuse from the pair as they wrote nasty notes and put them through his letter box.

Russ Jonno and Brandon Randy were accused of insulting not only the ageing star but also broadcasting the allegation that Mr. Randy had “stroked the pussy of Mr. Andrews granddaughter, Vanda Snatch.”

Miss Snatch, who has not denied the claims, is part of an all-girl group of performance “artistes” called “The Feline Flaps”. The Citizen understands that her MySpace site has been hastily redesigned to include loads of pictures of fluffy kittens and a link to Wood Green animal shelter.

Jonno has been suspended for 3 days without pay or complimentary Subway, and Randy has resigned to spend more time in the Cayman Paxton Islands.

“The Hotel Where Nothing Ever Went Right” has been credited as the inspiration for BBC series “Fawlty Towers”

John Cleese was unavailable for comment.

Following a break-in at the Co-op food store in Great North Road, during which intruders attempted to gain access to the contents of the cash machine using a blow-torch, the manager has claimed to have discovered “Fireproof Money”.

“Yep,” said Dave Bedejaz, 42. “They scorched the cash machine and the ceiling and all sorts, but all the money was safely intact.”

Bedejaz has since filed a patent for Fireproof Money, although he finds it difficult to explain why exactly the money itself cannot be set alight. “It’s nothing to do with the fact it’s in a very secure cash machine,” said Mr Bedejaz. “It must be the money itself.”

Bedejaz, recently divorced, plans to leave his lucrative retail management career to make a fortune fireproofing other people’s money. Town Council enterprise spokesman Warren Tutha Gee said, “It’s great to see the spirit of entrepreneurialism alive and well in St Neots. We’ll definitely submit Mr Bedejaz for a Huntingdonshire Chamber of Commerce award of some description.”
Story by Mr Rainbows

The Citizen understands that the Town Council has appointed the team that brought a landslide Democrat victory in the USA to run its next election campaign. In a stunning move to outflank opposition contenders changes to party representatives have already started.

The citizen tracked down council leader Bereck Omilea for a comment. Sporting a 16 layer thick covering of “Brown Beauty” tanning lotion he remarked, “This is a turning point for us, when you see how that yank got loads of votes and got liked into the bargain, it’s got to be a winner. Mrs Omilea took some convincing to adopt a couple of kids from Uganda but they’ll be here soon. I reckon with this new image I’ll even be getting some of those Crosshall Road waverers on board, they always like a bit of fashion!”

The opposition were less convinced however. “This is absolutely ridiculous,” said Tory stalwart Paul Marcel. “These types of stunts only serve to reduce the credibility of politics, it’ll never work”.

The Citizen understands that Mr. Marcel’s gender re-assignment is going well and that he hopes to be deeded to stand as Paula Mailling by the next election.

Ahead of the Health Check Report final result from the District Council - due out early 2009 - the Citizen can reveal some exclusively “obtained” information.

Initial findings have shown the town’s inhabitants to be “quite sick”. Most people were unaware of the checks being carried out on them, and therefore the findings were deemed to be true and accurate.

• 25% were found to be “fair to middling”
• 25% were suffering complete and absolute apathy
• 45% were suffering from aggressive “I went to London once so fuck off” syndrome
• 4% were unsure - and should be in solitary confinement
• 1% thought to be aliens.

Along with suggesttions on how to improve the future health of the town’s residents, the report mentions ways in which the town has already begun improvements. In particular, an unnamed councillor said that “The many and varied gift-card shops in the town centre could only help combat this general depression”. Indeed, the council has designed a range of cards targetting the sector of the population suffering from “Fuck Off Syndrome”, to save on difficult conversation. These include:

• “Do you want some?” (Tick list)
• “You and me, outside” with date & time confirmation slip and return envelope
• “What the ___ are you looking at, you ___” (left blank for your own comments).

The design of these cards is hoped to bring about a calmer, less shouty town centre, thus attracting more visitors to the town. However, this could all be to no avail. Traffic calming and the relocation of the recycling centre could cause such traffic congestion that it drives otherwise sober citizens to drink - or even Huntingdon.
Story by JW

The Citizen has successfully avoided court - and therefore won by default - following a cease-and-desist notice from a local with no sense of humour.

“I’m delighted with the outcome,” said Citizen Editor Tim C after remaining tight-lipped - and unpublished - for the last week. “Obviously I’d love to tell you who was involved, but I’ll have to leave that to your imagination. Needless to say, I was able to talk some sense into the gentleman in question and he realised that he was taking things over the top.”

“After a couple of speed-bumps on the road to success, the Citizen will now be able to run a full news service as before. Although, what with the road to success being located in St Neots, there’ll probably be some more speed-bumps, some traffic lights, and a mini roundabout or three to negotiate before we truly become the town’s Premier News Resource.”

In a Citizen exclusive we can reveal the local residents have managed to successfully raise a lot of money by ‘giving a penny for the guy’.

It has apparently become a tradition for some youths to go around before bonfire night with a flammable effigy of a locally disliked figure.

We caught up with one of the youths behind it and he said, ”We’ve been taken aback by how popular this year’s ‘guy’ has been. In previous years it has been less successful.  The guy is stuffed full of copies of the free papers, and clothes we picked up around 3am Saturday morning.”

He continued, “The guy has been around town using a wheelbarrow we, erm, borrowed, and some residents thought our guy was more real the who he represents.  A few did offer to give us extra money if we made a substitution and put the real person on the bonfire, though sadly we had to decline.”

The Citizen did attempt to get reaction from the local councillor concerned about the fundraising, though no-one was available to give an official comment.  However one councillor, wishing to remain annonymous, said, “Well, it may be for a cause, however in a modern era this sort of thing shouldn’t be encouraged, and anyway it looks nothing like me”.

Local youths in St Neots are, according to a spokesman, attempting to break a world record in baking cakes.

Over the past week teenagers have been seen coming out of shops with packs of eggs and flour. When questioned one anonymous fellow said, “Er, me and a load of others are planning to bake a large cake”. When questioned about how very few people had heard of this record attempt the youth said, “I blame the town council for the lack of publicity, seems they were more into Hallowe’en and trying out their scary masks.”

Guinness declined to comment.
A Flaming Reporter

Eaton Socon resident Felix Dakaat this week revealed that, according to his studies, Greenwich Mean Time is indeed “quite mean”.

“I’ve been wondering about this for a couple of years,” said Dakaat, 43, of Shakespeare Road. “I have analysed the weather patterns over the course of the last five years and it seems that all the worst weather happens while we are running to GMT time, instead of BST.”

Using a “rather complex Excel spreadsheet involving macros and v-lookups and stuff”, Dakaat was able to determine that the worst weather - wind, rain, snow, sleet and the suchlike - occurred between the last weekend of October, and the changeable date in Spring when the clocks go forward. “Just look at this week,” said the accountant. “The clocks went back on Sunday morning and since then it’s been freezing. It proves my point.”

Greenwich Mean Time is now largely a notional time measurement as official timekeeping is done using UTC. The Citizen pointed out to Dakaat that maybe his cause and effect was a little faulty, and that the “mean” in Greenwich Mean Time was to account for the differences caused by the Earth’s elliptical rotation around the sun - the same difference which means we gain a leap-day every fourth February. Dakaat responded that “Obviously the Citizen reporters have no idea what they’re talking about. I mean, in Paris they refer to Western European time as PMT, and they are certainly moody and hormonal all the fucking time.”

Cllr Derek Miles commented that, “St Neots Market Square Mean Time is about four minutes ahead of GMT anyway, so this is all by the by.” We contacted Expert Scientists on the matter but “they” refused to comment, and just mumbled something about Swatch Internet Time.