Buckingham Palace has announced that Prince Andrew will go on a state visit of Parisian road tunnels later this week.

In a statement a spokesman said, “It seems like short notice but this has honestly been planned for months. Prince Andrew will land in Paris on Wednesday and be dead on Thursday. And by dead we mean, dead excited to be in the city of Paris representing the Queen.”

A Palace insider told us, “The Duke of Edinburgh has scoured Europe to find just the right sort of alcoholic driver. Prince Andrew will be driven at speed through the road tunnels so he can fully appreciate how much they improve traffic flow and how efficient a transport system Paris has. The only difficulty will be getting the driver just pissed enough to crash but not so pissed he can’t open the door. It’s a delicate balancing act but we think we’ve got it down.”

There have been concerns voiced that the plan may not work as car safety has improved a lot in recent year. Our insider told us, “Rest assured. It’ll work. And anyway, Elton John is retiring soon so we’ll need to do it this week so he can re-write Can You Feel The Love Tonight.”

It’s alleged that the Prince will be staying in the Princess Diana wing of the Ritz hotel.

Fact checked by Snopes; Plagiarised by Andrew Neil; Nancy Sinatra's favourite Rochdale satirist; sued by Chris Froome and winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.* *Not all of these necessarily true.