Stop being friendly to each other you weird bastards, South orders North

THE South has ordered the North to stop being all weird and friendly and in and out of each other’s houses, supposedly because of coronavirus. 

Health secretary Matt Hancock, whose skin crawls at the thought of people chatting in funny accents over the walls of their back yards, has ordered Mancunians to stop socialising immediately with plans to expand it to the whole region. 

He said: “These people exchange more friendly words with strangers than Hampshire residents do with their own families. It’s not right and it has to stop. 

“So, using Covid as an excuse, I’ve decided they are no longer allowed to wander in and out of each other’s nasty back-to-back hovels. No more popping round to ‘Auntie Hilda’ to see if she wants some ‘leftover hotpot’. 

“You can still share the same indoor space when acting as viable economic units, so gyms and offices and hairdressers are open, making a mockery of the whole thing. 

“But the days when you treated strangers, friends and family with anything less than suspicion and fear are over for you freaks. Start being normal. That’s an order.” 

Mancunian Jimmy Bates said: “Come up here mate. My fists want to form a social bubble with your f**king face.”

The Daily Mail guide to covering the Royal Family

WOULD you like to develop a hysterical love/hate relationship with the Royal Family? Here Daily Mail news editor Tom Logan explains how to go about it.

Divide them into good and evil

The Royals are either utterly perfect (the Queen, Kate, Wills) or as evil as Hitler (Meghan and Fergie). Get into this frame of mind by reading tomorrow’s story, ‘LOVELY KATE WEARS PRETTY DRESS WHILE ATTENTION-SEEKER MEGHAN SETS UP CHARITY, THE COW’.

Develop a love of mawkishness

At the Mail we like to turn up the tweeness to 11, for example, ‘ICKLE GEORGE IS A BIG BOY NOW IN HIS GROWN-UP LONG TROUSERS’. We feel that if a headline makes you want to instantly vomit up your breakfast, we’ve hit the right note.

Sound like a bitter ex-partner

Whenever you talk about Royals you don’t like – or in our case, publish articles in a national newspaper – sound like an obsessive bloke who follows his ex on Facebook and won’t stop telling people “You won’t believe what the bitch is up to now!”. This is perfectly normal and not at all worrying or stalkerish. 

Be prepared to waste a massive chunk of your life

I certainly have, with scoops like ‘WHAT PRINCESS ANNE SAID TO STIRLING MOSS IN 1973’. You too should be fascinated by inconsequential royal trivia, such as whether Prince Andrew’s Muppet-eyed daughters rent expensive properties in London, much as you’d expect them to.

Be prepared to turn on them at any point 

Our fawning – some would say nauseating – coverage of Kate is working out just fine at the moment. But if people get bored we’ll have to have a rethink, which is why we already have a story on file entitled ‘POSH, FULL OF HERSELF AND THIN AS A RAKE: WHY KATE IS A SNOOTY SLAG’.