Prince Philip Killed My Wife...

In a sensational development, pensioner Len Bigpodd has claimed that Prince Philip is responsible for his wife's death. "I saw him with my own eyes," sixty six year old Mr Bigpodd told Scunthorpe Crown Court, where he is currently standing trial for his sixty-four year old wife Edna's murder. "I hadn't been able to sleep, so I went down to the kitchen to make a cup of Ovaltine, when I got back the bedroom he was standing over her, holding a pillow." According to Bigpodd, the Duke of Edinburgh simply laughed when he saw him standing in the doorway. "It was an evil cackle, I was so shocked that I couldn't move to stop him as he pushed past me and ran down the stairs," he claims. "I snapped out of it in time to look out of the window and see him get into a chauffeur-driven Daimler, which sped off into the night!"

Quentin Harvard-Ponce QC, for the Crown, dismissed Mr Bigpodd's claims as 'preposterous'. When asked under cross-examination what possible motive the Duke might have for smothering an old age pensioner in Scunthorpe, Mr Bigpodd replied by asking what his motive had been for killing Princess Diana. "I mean, she was already divorced from Prince Charles, so she weren't any real threat to the Monarchy, was she? I know she was carrying on with a darkie, but nobody seems to care these days," he told a horrified Court. "You'd think he'd get the secret service to do it for him, but my mate Bernie swears his cousin knows a bloke who was on holiday in Paris the day she died and saw Prince Philip underneath the Mercedes, tampering with the brakes, just hours before the accident!" Looking aghast, the jury also heard that, according to another of Mr Bigpodd's mates, it was an 'open secret' that the Duke had also been responsible for the deaths of his both his mother-in-law and his sister-in-law. "Of course, in the cases of both the Queen Mum and Princess Margaret, they were mercy killings, to put them out of their misery. The old dear was well past it - completely incontinent and ga ga - and Princess Margaret wasn't much better, pissed out her mind and her liver wrecked," he testified. "It was getting embarrassing, them pissing all over the furniture at the Palace, especially when they had visitors. They couldn't keep blaming it on the corgis."

Significantly, Bigpodd claims that the Duke smothered both the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret with pillows, the same method he allegedly used to murder Mrs Bigpodd. "I think that because he got away with those three murders, he's gone kill-crazy," speculates the pensioner. "He knows the authorities will cover up for him - look how quick they were to rule Diana's death an accident, despite all the evidence to the contrary! Let's face it, he's a bit past it for the hunting nowadays, so he has to get his thrills some way - isn't man said to be the biggest game of all?" Mr Bigpodd's counsel, Rupert Winstanleigh-Todger QC, has told the Court that the defence intends calling the Duke as a witness and has urged the authorities to check his whereabouts with regard to every recent unsolved murder. "How many other innocent people has this fiend killed for kicks, secure in the knowledge that it will be hushed up," he told a press conference. "Take those drive by shootings in Manchester last week - several witnesses reported seeing a chauffeur-driven Daimler with an elderly man in the back seat apparently loading a double-barreled shotgun. But have the police done anything about it? Of course not - they're blaming it on gangs."

The trial judge, His Honour Judge Julian Fruitnutt, has already warned both Mr Bigpodd and his counsel that they could face further charges for perjury and be held in contempt if they continue with this line of defence. The court had earlier heard that just hours before Mrs Bigpodd's murder, she and the defendant had had a blazing row over, during which she had refused to allow his ferrets - which were allegedly sick - sleep with them. The row had culminated with Mrs Bigpodd burning her husband's prized collection of beer mats, which he had collected over a forty year period. As he attempted to stamp out the blazing beer mats, Bigpodd was heard by several neighbours to scream, "I'm going to kill you, you fucking bitch", before storming off to his local pub and drinking ten pints and half a bottle of whisky. The case continues.