Anti-Cluedo

Board Game to get 21st Century Revamp

Commentators were aghast this week, as plans were revealed for an updated version of Cluedo. The board game industry's journal, Dice & Counters Monthly, announced that, while the basic murder premise remained the same, the whodunit concept would be turned on its head.

In Anti-Cluedo, we all know who is responsible - Gordon Brown, obviously - the object is to find out who the victim is and how they were killed.

Out go Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, the billiard room, the lead piping and all the other familiar aspects of the game. In come characters, places and objects recognisable from the modern world.

Who was the victim?
…the goth kicked and stamped to death by feral youths in the park?
…the polish migrant worker stabbed by her boyfriend in the street?
…the father of four beaten and punched by drunken chavs outside his house?
…the asylum seeker knifed by racists as he left the library?
…the 10-year old killed by a speeding SUV on the way to school?
…the UK economy battered by inflation and loan defaults in the credit crunch?

Spirit Guides to Strike

Psychics predict chaos will follow new law on mediums

Amon-Ptah, an ancient Egyptian priest, has condemned plans to extend consumer protection legislation to cover fortune-tellers and faith healers.

Speaking via medium, Lesley Mode, he said, “This will provoke strike action by spirit guides in the astral plane. Contact with the dead and visions of the future will be withdrawn. Powers to heal by touch or incantation will not be supported.”

Cloud Rain, a 10,000 year old Native American shaman speaking through psychic Sybil Bonkers, predicted chaos: “How will the bereaved perpetuate their grief without receiving ambiguous and anodyne advice in séances? How can people plan ahead, without knowing in which month they will be lucky in love? How will the incurably sick be miraculously cured just prior to dying?”

Essex-based clairvoyant, Clare Voint, foresaw trouble: “Something will happen, possibly involving people. I see a building near water. A man with a medical condition affecting his upper body may die. That’s £200, please.”

A government spokesman sought to quell fears that the bemused and reality-challenged might be targeted by people trying to make a load of cash through loopholes in the law. “That’s precisely what we’re trying to stop,” he said.