Back From the Undead...

The Daily Excess has found itself censured by the Press Council after running a story claiming that John Darwin, who recently turned himself into police after being missing, presumed dead, for five years following a canoeing accident, had returned from the dead as a flesh-eating zombie. The newspaper has strongly defended the story, which claimed that Mr Darwin's wife, distraught by his loss at sea, turned to voodoo to raise him from his watery grave. "We have a reliable eyewitness who saw Darwin's seaweed-festooned decomposing corpse shamble its way out of the surf and stumble up the beach at Hartlepool," says Deputy Editor Ron Noober, who is adamant that the 'witness' - a Peter Yelch of no fixed abode - was not paid by the paper, although it did present him with two gallons of methylated spirits 'for his troubles'. "Obviously, Mrs Darwin was disgusted by her husband's disgusting appearance, so she kept him hidden in the attic of her house for several years." The article also claimed that in order to restore her husband's appearance, Mrs Darwin proceeded to feed him the flesh of tramps and down and outs she lured to the house, before murdering and cooking them.

"She had to keep feeding him human flesh to stop him from decomposing - it took five years to get him looking presentable again," says Noober. "By then, the police were beginning to get suspicious of the number of disappearances in the area - that's why they decided to flee to Panama, where life is cheap and nobody notices the odd homeless person getting eaten!" Unfortunately, Darwin's brain had regenerated enough for him to start suffering pangs of conscience, and he confessed his cannibalism to the police, according to the Excess. This is the second time the newspaper has been reprimanded by the Press Council in the last six months. Earlier this year its story that the McCanns were part of a cannibal cult and had murdered and eaten their missing daughter Madelaine. Whilst both stories have been widely condemned for their lack of factual content and the distress they have caused their subjects, the Daily Excess has gained support from at least one other newspaper. "You can't really blame them for trying to enliven what are actually two pretty dull stories," declares Jake Flingle, editor of top-selling tabloid the Daily Tits. "I mean, what's the substance of the Darwin story? Man presumed drowned, turns up alive, arrested for fraud. The McCann story is even worse: child vanishes in Portugal. That's it! Don't people realise how difficult it is to keep stories with so little sensational material on the front pages for months at a time? For God's sake, they were just trying to maintain reader interest! They should be congratulated, not condemned!"