Damned Lies

So, just what are these rumours about David Cameron and George Osborne that Labour spin-doctor Damien McBride was attempting to promulgate? Apparently, if you read certain tabloid newspapers you'd know, as they related them with lip-smacking relish, whilst at the same time telling us how awful it was that anyone would spread such lies for political gain. However, the rest of will just have to continue speculating. Just what was this embarrassing illness some senior Tory was meant to have? Did Cameron allegedly have athlete's dick as a result of some wild foot-fetish action with with a hooker with a fungal infection? And wasn't there something about an incriminating photograph of George Osborne? Was that the one of him with the dead prostitute? Not that I'm implying he murdered a whore. At least, not on his own. It was the entire Shadow Cabinet, after a gang bang at a wild sex party went horribly wrong.

Obviously, none of this is true - these are merely amusing stories told for satirical effect. But I'm betting that they're a bloody sight more interesting than whatever the real rumours were. That was McBride's mistake - he just wasn't inventive enough - if you are going to libel a public figure, go the whole hog. Come up with something so foul, disgusting and bizarre that you can always use the defence that no reasonable person would take it to be true. Safe in the knowledge, of course, that the sort of people likely to read such things on the web or in tabloids aren't reasonable - they're raving conspiracy nuts who'll believe anything. Even that Paul McCartney is dead and being impersonated by a double.