Producers of two popular Australian soap operas have denied that they are planning a special cross over episode in which the dark back stories of two their most popular characters are explored. Apparently there have never been plans for an episode in which Neighbours Harold Bishop and Home and Away’s Alf Stewart would attend a reunion of the military unit they both served in during the Vietnam War. “We most definitely wouldn’t have had a series of flashbacks during which we learned that they had once burned down an entire Vietnamese village suspected of harbouring Viet Cong fighters, an experience which ultimately resulted in Harold turning to religion and Alf becoming a curmudgeonly old git,” Channel Ten executive Bruce Boater claimed this week. “Frankly, that sort of thing would be far too dark for family viewing, just like that police brutality storyline we weren’t planning for Mark Brennan, or the story about Dr Kennedy’s illegal secret experiments at the hospital which we never planned.” Boater did, however, confirm that a Neighbours spin off in which Harold and the ghost of his dead wife Madge travel around Australia in a camper van, solving crimes.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, the Daily Excess has been forced to deny that it had planned to make a number of dead 1970s TV stars the subject of lurid sex scandals in an attempt to divert attention from the Tory party’s recent disastrous general election result. “It is completely untrue that we ever planned a story accusing Robert Robinson, Frank Muir and Patrick Campbell of behind the scenes sex romps with minors whilst recording Call My Bluff in the early seventies,” declared a spokesperson for the right wing rag. “I can quite categorically say that we never had plans to reveal lurid details of how their victims had to guess whether they were bluffing about the definition of various terms of sexual perversion – if they guessed incorrectly, they’d have the depravity performed on them.” The spokesperson added that even if they had planned such stories, it wouldn’t have had anything to do with trying to distract readers from the failings of the Tory government. “Our intent would have been to try and kick start the police investigations into historic celebrity sex abuse,” they claimed. “Their investigations started going off the rails when they started investigating well known conservative politicians – we would have been trying to get them back on the right track by focusing on seventies celebrities again. If we’d been planning such stories, of course. Which we weren’t. But suffice to say that if we had, then anybody who ever appeared on the Morecambe and Wise Show should have felt worried.”
Another British tabloid has denied that it was recently forced to drop plans to out a still living celebrity as an alleged sex offender. “There is no truth to these claims that we were targeting TV personalities of a more recent vintage because the public were tired of seeing celebrities in their seventies and eighties getting their collars felt,” a spokesperson for the Daily Norks claimed. “It is completely untrue that we felt that all the obvious suspects – Savile, Gary Glitter, Stuart Hall – had already been convicted, or like Cliff Richard and Jim Davidson, accused and cleared and that readers would only be shocked if we fingered someone apparently blameless and unexpected.” The spokesperson emphasised, quite strenuously, that their plans hadn’t been derailed by their target ‘outing’ themselves. “Obviously, we were never targeting former Grandstand, Match of the Day and Count Down host Des Lynam, the ‘silver stallion’ so beloved of ladies of a certain age, as a rampant sex maniac,” they told The Sleaze. “But if we had, which, of course, we weren’t, then his outing of himself as a UKIP supporter would have wrecked any such non-existent story. Let’s face it, I think we’d all rather that it had turned out that he was a nonce – it would have been far easier to take than the idea that he openly supports a bunch of extreme right wing crackpots.”
Finally, in UK politics, former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron most definitely didn’t, following his surprise resignation, try to clarify his position on gay rights by saying that he didn’t disapprove of same sex marriages – it was just gay sex he didn’t like, as it made his eyes water.
Remember, if you have any unsubstantiated rumours, grainy, out of focus and obviously faked photos or dubious tape recordings involving the debauched behaviour of celebrities or politicians, send them to us at the usual address. Just because it isn’t true doesn’t mean it’s a lie – it could just be Total Bollocks!
