The Archbishop of Canterbury on... the Glastonbury Festival of the Performing Arseholes

23rd June 2023

WAKING with an unaccountable throbbing of the temples, I recall being invited by the makers of my favourite premium rum to participate in an advertisement for their product.

The commercial would be aimed at the Japanese market and out of reverence for my station, they asked if I might come up with an appropriate storyboard.

After mindful reflection and prayer, I suggested that, fortified by a bottle of their liquor drained in one, I tear off my cassock to reveal myself naked and ripped save a loincloth, wielding a hunting knife as long and broad as my torso.

Inhaling a second bottle of their signature 23-year aged reserve, I wrestle with Godzilla who is rampaging through Tokyo as is his wont, before slitting his throat. ‘The power of the holy spirit’, runs the caption.

Predictably the advertisement is a great success and makes me a cult hero in the Far East, though my ecclesiastical status in England is uncompromised since the campaign is unseen outside Japan.

Sending a healthy six-figure royalty cheque to the bank, I take a light breakfast and peruse a periodical where I read that Edwina Currie told those complaining about mortgage rates that when they were 16 per cent ‘Home ownership rocketed but we survived’ she tweeted.

Roast my fucking arse over the burning flatulence of Billy Bragg, did your fingers think to run this by Mr Brain upstairs before tapping out and sending it into the world like a flightless bird from a high tower? Sure you paid 16 per cent back in the 1980s or whenever – 16 per cent of fuck all! You couldn’t get a fucking septic tank in Dewsbury nowadays for what you paid for your first place! No generation had it as soft as yours and it had fuck all to do with avocado-dodging, you smug cunt!

A poll shows that the number of Leave voters who still think it was right to leave the European Union stands at 18 per cent.

You could look at this and think, ‘Well, at last the penny’s dropping with the ruinous hordes of jingoistic, cementheaded fuckwits who voted like braindead lemmings, now that they’ve only got about a penny left in their pockets’. Or you could look at it the other fucking way and rip your nipples off in despair that even now, with the economy burning like a pile of old tyres, there are twats still gammon enough to insist things are going well! Still, fuck the 82 per cent that have changed their mind, eh? Come on the Mail, Express, Telegraph, Sun, the BBC, and the brickshitting political parties – let’s carry on pandering to that fucking 18 per cent, you know it makes sense!

And Just Like That… the revival of Sex and the City has entered its second season to mixed reviews.

Jesus to fuck, I don’t fucking care how gay you are, keep a pile of rocks at hand when you’re watching this unfettered shit blancmange because you’re gonna be hurling them at the screen from the get-go! It was bad enough watching this emaciated, solipsistic gaggle of featherheads poncing round Manhattan the first time round! It’s now fucking 2023 and we need this sort of supremely irrelevant cathode goop like we need an imaginary slice of cake from Marie Antoinette! Get in the fucking Hudson river and take your whimsical plots about penis pumps with you!

Finally, this weekend sees Glastonbury in full swing, with festivalgoers braving adverse weather to see some of the biggest and brightest stars of rock and pop music come out to shine.

Holy cocksucking Casper, have you seen the line-up? About as much radicalism and edge as a Lancashire brass band contest! Guns N’ Roses? Come to entertain us with some of your old-time racist ballads, have you? Rick Astley? Fuck’s sake, talk about the Tom Jones Revival Award for extended a fucking 30 second joke into a ten-year career extension! Yusuf stroke Cat Stevens? The cheerleader for killing Salman Rushdie? I hope it pisses down, I hope a tornado blows the fucking pyramid stage off its moorings and away into a neighbouring fucking county, and I hope that’s followed by ten inches of snow!

'I'm in an undisclosed location,' I whisper. 'You're in the pool shed,' says Akshata, outside the door

22nd June 2023

From the diary of Rishi Sunak, Britain’s least tangible prime minister

WHEN everything’s going so well, why interfere? So I’ve spent the week in hiding.

Not in the Commons, apart from PMQs which doesn’t count because it’s only for the hardcore heads, not in Downing Street, not in the house. Unfortunately my wife worked it out.

‘Why are you in the shed now? It was Boris got banished, not you. They’re doubling interest rates out here, it’s ten per cent now,’ she says from outside.

‘The news said five!’ I squeak, giving myself away, and slink out ashamed. In truth I think she knew last night when the children were swimming and she was making remarks about rats in the outbuildings and calling an exterminator.

‘I felt,’ I say, ‘that it was a time to step back from the country, the party and indeed the family, to rebalance my chakras, and to heal.’ ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ she replies, ‘but they noticed you were gone.’

‘Swordaunt was holding the front bench alone,’ she continues, ‘the Telegraph has called you Judas but cowardly, and the economy’s crashing. There’s also a submarine. And the boy comes to clean the pool tomorrow.’

‘Tell me more about this submarine,’ I say, but Akshata senses my avoidance strategy. ‘Labour says you’ve lost all moral standing. The Tories say you’ve lost all economic standing. Boris says you’re a cunt. He wrote a postcard.’

‘Well I’m glad I wasn’t there for all that,’ I say, decisively. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘good to know the country can run itself into the ground without you.’