Jubilee

Or, Boil Your Head

Once the guillotines were set up at Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace, the Jubilee proceeded better than almost anyone anticipated. The Queen’s head came off so neatly that its image is used on postage stamps to this day. Sadly, neither the Queen, her consort nor the heir to the throne could be recycled; though the younger princes and their various heifers were found sufficiently wholesome to feed the animals at the Zoo and the ravens at the Tower over the space of several months.

The Prime Minister, a distant relative of the Windsors who happened not to be on holiday when the celebrations took place, was a much more successful subject. There was an initial hitch when the blade of the Hyde Park guillotine bounced off the rubbery bulge at the back of the neck where Mr Cameron stored his speeches; but an enterprising civil servant, assisted by various NHS personnel, was able to procure various implements so that the job could be finished by hand. A great cheer went up from the watching crowd when the well-known appendage, a little ragged at the neck but otherwise undamaged, was held up by the strands which had partly covered its bald spot and then stuck on a spiked fence for display.

After a week the head was sent to Porton Down, where the brain was detected, removed and used in the manufacture of mind-relaxing drugs for goldfish. Mr Cameron’s head was then boiled thoroughly, until the face turned a charming lilac and maximum expansion was achieved; a cistern some fifty feet across was used for this purpose. The skin of the Prime Minister’s face was flayed and tanned to enhance its natural waterproof qualities, and after due processing yielded twenty-five large family tents for emergency accommodation of the homeless.