The Government has announced that as many people in the UK have died from Coronavirus as have been found dead in Michael Barrymore’s swimming pool.

A spokesman said, “This is a milestone for this virus in the UK. Earlier today a person died from Coronavirus. That brings the total number of deaths in the UK to 1. To put that in context  that’s equal to the number of people found floating dead in Michael Barrymore’s swimming pool. It is also equal to the number of people that have been shot dead by Oscar Pistorius.”

There are fears that deaths from the virus could increase over the coming weeks. “We’re preparing for the worst. In the coming days we expect it to equal the mortality rate of Princess Diana’s car crash. By next week it could be as lethal as lorry drivers and next month you’re looking at something as lethal as Iain Duncan Smith, the Royal Family and Jim Jones.”

A young boy we interviewed to pad this article out a bit told us, “I’m really scared. I’ve never heard of Michael Barrymore but I’ve watched My Kind of People and was genuinely shocked and saddened. That show spawned Charlotte Church and the X Factor. If Coronavirus is worse than that who knows where it might lead.”

We tried to interview Coronavirus but it declined to meet us. Shame, we fancied 2 weeks in isolation.

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.