The institute for the blindingly obvious has today proclaimed that living in Italy and eating nice food may help depression.

Professor Frederick Seddon of Rochdale College told us, “The researchers looked at 2 groups of people. One group live in Italy, eat shed loads of fish and fresh herbs, enjoy the sun and were generally happier. The other group live in a dingy tower block in the north west, eat beige food and drink loads of special brew. The Italian lot were definitely happier.”

One of the subjects told the researchers, “I don’t really feel depressed. I get up in the morning and the sun is shining so I often feel like going and getting some exercise. Then I go to work, have a couple of hours for lunch which always involves at least a bottle of wine. Then I have a nap, go back to work for another couple of hours then go home and eat a pile more food with 45 of my closest relatives.”

Another subject said, “I wake up and usually it’s a fag and cold left overs from last night. Then I trudge to the bus stop in a force 9 gale and sideways rain. I spend the day with a bunch of people I hate stopping only for 10 minutes to shove some sandwich which is mostly mayonnaise down my throat. After that I go home, watch some TV about sex offenders and drink loads of Special Brew. Then I go to bed and contemplate how lonely I am.”

Seddon told us, “When you look at this you realise that it’s pretty rubbish research. There’s so many other factors at play here that it’s not just diet. But saying that this is diet related will sell more jars of Dolmio and the surplus of chick peas we’ve got for some reason.”

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.