Pangolin Obituary

The death has been reported of Dame Evadne Manifold-Thrust (b 1906). 

Dame Evadne was an early C20th century Olympian who gained two bronze medals in Club Hurling and Club Retrieval. The present Olympic Games under way somewhere abroad are a poignant reminder of Dame Evadne's altogether more amateur era.

Before her ennoblement, Evadne Thrust, as she was then, supported herself, first as a Stoker 2nd Class on the ill-fated SS Fortinbras (torpedoed, Leeds Liverpool canal 1917) then as part of The Strapping Lasses trapeze team with McFarter's travelling circus. In the days before drugs testing, Evadne often turned up to training clutching a crate of Hinchcliffe's Strewth Brown Ale.

Her marriage to fellow club hurler Sir Jack Manifold (1927) meant that Evadne had to retire. She was a far better hurler than Sir Jack and had no wish to embarrass him.

  

After Sir Jack's sad death, under the wheels of a runaway hearse in 1942, Dame Evadne threw herself into the Campaign for Noisier Hearses, becoming president in 1949, a post she held until her death. Police are investigating the circumstances of Dame Evadne's demise which apparently involved an electric milk float.

Trending: Free-range chicken farm to give free-range samples to bald people

Cheepin Cheerful Chickens of Glossop has announced that it will be making gifts of free eggs to bald people of all ages, in a celebration of what it is to be hairless. The presentations will take place at an open day at the farm on August 19th. There would also be merchandise for sale, such as billiard balls, videos of young coots and bald paté.

Feminist groups have reacted angrily, pointing out that this favours gentlemen of a male persuasion and Sinead O'Connor, but the Cheepin Cheerful spokesman responded that there were no age barriers here and it was all to promote inclusivity. 

"Why, I've visited a maternity ward," chirped MD Henrietta Fowler (74). "Not one of those babbies had a wisp of hair - and I bet they was evenly distributed across all the sexes! And they'll all be welcome here!"

Pangolin Travel

To compile our annual list of the best places to travel in the upcoming year, the Pangolin team thoroughly and meticulously considers a variety of factors. Which under-the-radar gems are most exciting to our let's-be-British-and-show-how-shitfaced-we-can-get denizens? Which destinations are our Brexit Breakaway specialists fielding requests for? 

Archibald Phutt (98) from Straddlethwaite, somewhere north of Watford Gap Services, shared his travel experiences: "Well I've never been out the country, and proud of it. Can't be doing with that foreign muck where they don't speak English like normal people - or was that Dewsbury? They don't even have proper money - what's wrong with pounds, shillins and pence?

We fought two world wars to keep 'em out and I'm not 'avin' them reds under the beds, yellow peril, wops and spics pinching my bottom while I eat me seagull 'n' chips!"

We asked him about his favoured holiday destinations. One eye got bigger than the other and he started muttering "Luxury. In my day..." so we felled him with a black pudding and nicked his false teeth.

For our five-starred holiday destination - enter Kylie Fishwick (22), our representative from Clacton, who explained that her passport didn't work any more now we're out of the EU Refeyendum. Especially as she'd lost it down a bog in Faliraki last year. She shared a photo of her fave hotel though.

"It's like, awesome, and when I come back from wherever I don't even need to get the key or try and remember where I'm staying the bed's just there. With a twin room like this you have a choice and you don't even have to get in the bed if you don't want. An' a dog come past and licked up all the puke!"

Sunbed by day, crash-pad by night.
Miasma Hotel, Chitterling-on-Sea

Don't miss our next issue:

A Seagull's take on Brexit. That Chekov bloke gets everywhere.