Not Even I Believe That Shit, Pope Tells Brown

POPE Benedict XVI has told Gordon Brown that he has believed some crazy things in his time but he's not buying that crap.

During an audience in Rome yesterday Mr Brown said Britain was facing a deep recession and its people were suffering, but insisted none of it had anything to do with him.

Pope Benedict told the prime minister: "Are you taking the piss? Eh? This is the Vatican, you can't just come in here and start taking the piss, you know.

"Listen chum, I believe that a 14 year-old girl got pregnant by the 'Holy Spirit' and that the child was the Son of God and also God at the same time, whatever that means.

"I believe that he walked on water, that he raised the dead and that he fed 5000 people with a couple of haddock.

"I believe that he was killed and then came back to life all in the same weekend and I believe that these tiny little wafers are his actual body and this rather cheap, nasty red wine is his actual blood.

"Not only that, but I also believe some really weird shit about dead, unbaptised babies being condemned to limbo. And, between you and me, I also believe that Jesus could fly.

"Now given all that, you would expect me to swallow just about anything, but what you just said sounds like a lot of arse to me."

The Pontiff added: "It doesn't take some kind of genius Pope to work out that your problems are based on a weak regulatory system and excessive government debt, both of which have been your responsibility for 11 and a half years.

"Not your fault? Get the fuck out of my office."

A Six Foot Tall Texan Cricket Lover Could Blend In Anywhere, Says FBI

SIR Allen Stanford, the six foot four Texan with an obsessive love of cricket, could be impossible to find, the FBI admitted last night.

The businessman has vanished without a trace leaving thousands of investors worried for their futures and wondering why yet another a Texan billionaire was so interested in cricket anyway.

An FBI spokesman said: "It's needle in a haystick time. We will of course be searching all over the West Indies, central America and even the tiny islands of the South Pacific, but let's be honest these places are already crawling with gigantic Texan cricket fans.

"He may try to assume a new identity, but if our undercover agents come across someone we think might be Stanford we'll engage him in a conversation about barbeques, guns and cricket but then make some really crass mistakes about the rules of the game in a bid to flush him out.

"If you are sitting at a bar and you hear a large man talking in a thick Texan drawl about silly-mid off, googlies and the bowling-style of someone called Curtly Ambrose, then please let us know so we can eliminate him from our inquiries."

The spokesman added: "We're also asking port authorities throughout the Carribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to notify us immediately if a huge, cricket bat-shaped submarine surfaces within their jurisdiction."

Meanwhile the England and Wales Cricket Board has admitted errors of judgement in its relationship with Stanford and is now desperately seeking a new unscrupulous millionaire to defile the national game.

An ECB spokesman said: "When does Conrad Black get out of jail?"