You swine!

Doctor Monastashus van der Koala, head of medical studies & sneezing at the University of Woolamaloo has been updating the Gazette to recent international epidemic news. He points out that while the mainstream media has been covering (or stoking public panic about, depending how you view it) the Mexican Swine Flu outbreak across the world (he advises worried readers that if going to a Mexican restaurant do not dance a salsa with any pigs who are present, no matter how friendly they are or how big and jolly their sombrero), he alerts us to a similarly name disease which has so far been ignored by the meedja: You Utter Swine Flu. This is a contagious condition which manifests itself in sufferers growing pencil moustaches and enduring uncontrollable urges to perform Terry Thomas impressions and generally act like utter cads. You have been warned.

You know I just realised when I got the WG back on the air tonight that I had forgotten my own sixth anniversary - the blog version (it previously existed as spoof newspaper articles done one emails from '91 onwards) of the WG started on April 7th, 2003. I notice that by coincidence back then I was writing a satirical piss take about the media's ridiculous bird flu coverage (or panic inducing nonsense) which had everyone convinced the world was about to end any moment and lead me to a new hobby which involved standing close to visiting Asian tourists in Edinburgh and doing an elaborate sneeze and dropping feathers to scare the hell out of them. Now today its Swine Flu. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose. I do wonder if both stories could dovetail - if some flu ridden birds and pigs, high on Lemsip, got down together and bred could they produce a hybrid strain of bird-pig flu and thus the world ends in a cloud of sneezes, feathers and the smell of bacon. Well, maybe when pigs fly. Which if the birds and pigs get it on could happen.