It has been revealed that Clr Brian ‘Hodge’ Podge, the Sheffield Councillor responsible for the hugely unpopular street tree felling programme, was rushed to hospital yesterday.

Sheffield Council is Labour controlled and Labour Councillor Podge has been under fire lately for using regressive, Tory-framed legislation to arrest anti-felling protestors. Sheffield residents are inflamed that such tactics are being used in a city still in shock over Orgreave. Ironically, Mr Podge lapsed into unconsciousness in lushly vegetated Dore.

A spokesman for The Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Dr ‘Lonesome’ George Strykes-Beck, told the Herald “We are treating Mr Podge for a massive overdose of irony brought on by inhuman levels of political hypocrisy. We are describing his condition as ‘untenable’.”

We contacted Canadian irony expert and soft-rock songstress Alanis Morissette but she refused to comment. Given that, ironically, the level of irony in the Podge case is higher than the irony exhibited in any of the instances referred to in her song ‘Ironic’, we consider her lack of comment to be ironic, don’t you think?

(Editor’s note: we have been asked to clarify that the reference in this piece to ‘lushly vegetated Dore’ refers to the Sheffield suburb of Dore and not the Leader of Sheffield City Council Julie Dore)