The Mash guide to pulling a sickie

AS Britain basks in a brief spell of sunshine, work must be avoided by any means necessary.

With one week of sun forecast before Britain is plunged back into sodden, hopeless misery, there has rarely been a greater need to feign illness.

Here’s how to temporarily emancipate yourself from wage slavery:

Sever your thumb

Digits are easily reattached, so a quick slip with a sharp implement is a neat way to buy yourself a few days’ recuperation. But you need to sever a thumb, not a middle finger, so that you can claim psychological damage for feeling unevolved.

Tunnel out

The best sickie is no sickie at all – the ‘Colditz’ approach is to book a room for a ‘meeting’ then dig your way to freedom.  Ideally you would have a pre-prepared tunnel, which is why forward-thinking workers have strategically placed rugs under their desks and leave the office every night with pockets full of soil.

Accuse a co-worker of trying to kill you

Write a handful of scrawled notes in crayon saying things like ‘You’re mine fucker – Richard in IT’ and ‘I’m going to eat your head in the sales meeting – Richard in IT (again)’ then take them to the police at lunchtime. Expect a short session of questioning followed by a free afternoon ‘for your own safety’. It’s best to finger someone pleasant and well-adjusted as the aspirant murderer, because psychopaths in films are always like that.

Get a senior management job

This requires some preparation – several years of flagrant self-promotion, backstabbing and generally obnoxious behaviour. But once you’ve inveigled your way to senior management you can blow out work when you feel like it. Just remember to turn up occasionally and give everyone a massive bollocking because that’s what you do.

Lords to be offered money to back gay marriage

MEMBERS of the House of Lords will be paid in cash to back gay marriage if it will just get it done.

Supporters of the long-suffering reform insisted bribery would be the quickest and easiest way to get the bill through its final reading in the upper house.

Tom Logan, a gay marriage campaigner, said: “We’ve already won the argument and are, frankly, very bored of it now. So rather than wading through this shit yet again, how’s about £350 each?”

Former Tory MP, Lord Hobbs, said he would back gay marriage in exchange for an iPad Mini and a late-afternoon session with someone called ‘The Ultra-Bitch’.