Royal Navy Running Out of Ammo

British First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Bill Barnacle has informed Downing Street today that the Royal Navy cannot continue its campaign against Libya for much longer.

The admirable admiral has advised Whitehall that the navy had budgeted for a 6-month campaign but that the recent re-allocation of cannonballs to the army for the 90-gun birthday salute to the Duke of Edinburgh had almost completely emptied its arsenal.

Red-faced civil service mandarins at the Ministry of Defence are said to be dismayed by the admission that the world's oldest naval force doesn't have the balls to fight on.

Meanwhile, in the Excited States of Um ... Erica, top-ranking politicians are said to rolling around on the White House lawn frothing with uncontrolled mirth while sputtering disingenuous and disparaging remarks about "European Puddle Pirates".

In Tripoli, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi commented that he is pleased with the news because the constant thudding of cannonballs against his compound walls had been giving him a nasty headache. He said he hopes the Royal Navy will now let him get on with his chess game without any further unpleasantness.

The Royal Navy's lack of balls has surely not gone unnoticed at Al Qaeda headquarters in downtown Islamabad either. Al Qaeda spokesman Denis al-Menace today commented ... [continued on page 94]

Use Your Loaf!

Give Us This Day
The American artist Andy Warhol is best remembered for saying "everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes". Fame is fleeting; infamy lasts forever. And the British will forever be infamous for ruining our daily bread.

Use or Abuse?
In cockney rhyming slang a "loaf" is a loaf of bread: head. The expression "use your loaf" means "think about it". In 1961 British scientists at Chorleywood, in Hertfordshire, England thought about it. What they came up with was, unfortunately, a way to "abuse your loaf".

Buck and Dough
The result of their thinking was a new, super-fast, very cheap way of making bread - nasty bread. Bread made by the Chorleywood process now represents 80% of the bread sold in Britain. Production has spread around the world as bread factories (we used to call them bakeries - remember?) adopt this easy way to make a fast loaf and a fast buck.

Use Your Wonderloaf
I grew up eating that bread, you are probably very familiar with it too. Bread made by the Chorleywood process is white, light, soft and stays fresh for several days. Sounds good so far doesn't it? But when you understand what goes into Chorleywood Bread you may never want to eat it again.

The Proof is in the Eating
Traditional bread is made very slowly. Dough is mixed with yeast and allowed to "proof" (i.e. rise slowly). It is then kneaded thoroughly to develop gluten from the natural wheat protein and give the bread its body.

Fat and Full of Wind
Chorleywood bread, on the other hand, can be made with poor quality, low protein wheat. Very high speed mixers are used to introduce as much air into the dough as possible. Very little gluten will be generated (because of the low protein content of the wheat) so the body of the bread is maintained using hard fat, large quantities of yeast and chemical additives.

Hard to Digest
Incidentally, since this wonderful new "bread" was introduced there has been a marked increase in the number of cases of people who are incapable of digesting bread. Coincidence?