The NHS breathed a deep sigh of relief today after Judge Ian Pringle QC ruled that you can’t send surgeons to prison just for behaving like coked up sociopaths.

“The NHS is under a great deal of pressure, we can’t go around locking up surgeons just for stabbing people. That would be mental. If you think about it, we kind of want them to cut people.”

The ruling follows the case of Lavinia Woodward, 24, a Cambridge medical student and aspiring surgeon who attacked her boyfriend with some jam before stabbing him in the thigh with a bread knife.

“There were mitigating circumstances in the case.” We’re pretty sure we heard someone say the QC might have said. “For one, she was off her tits on coke and we’ve all been there. You can’t go judging people for that. Am I right?”

“Also have you seen her? She’s well fit and she’s called Lavinia, you can’t send somebody called Lavinia to prison. She might get teased for being posh for goodness sake.”

A spokesbones for the NHS said “thank goodness for that. Waiting lists are really massive and if you went about locking up surgeons for cocaine abuse and stabbing people the whole place would grind to a standstill. I mean seriously lock up one and you’d have to lock them all up.”

Quentin D Fortesqueue is a founding editor of The Rochdale Herald. Part time amateur narcissist and full time satirist Quentin is never happier than when playing his lute and drinking a full bodied Bordeaux. He rarely plays the lute and never gets to drink Bordeaux.