Thousands of satirists across the UK and their tens of readers around the world face a crisis as the supplies of ink slowed to dribble today. Analysts blame the shortage on an abnormally high quantity of ludicrous news stories emerging from the capital, coupled with the recent demise of the Rochdale ink industry.
Freelance satirist, Digby Popper was close to tears in his garret in the back room at Scrivenshaft’s Quill Shop on Dodgson Street.
“This is a disaster. I’ve been mocking politicians full-time since 1957. It’s a cut-throat business. Normally we have to scour the papers for hours each day looking for suitable material and have to race the other satirists to get our take on parliamentary buffoonery onto paper first. Now, for the first time in living memory, there is more than enough flapdoodle emanating from London to go around, but no way for us to rip the shit out it. I have a family to feed you know.”
Cecil Parker-Quink, former owner of the Royton Blue/Black Inkwell told us:
“It’s just bloody typical, that is. For years we had a steady business with the satirists, just enough to keep the wolf from the door, like. We could rely on MPs to play silly beggars, but nothing like on today’s scale; we could have made a killing. Sadly, we had to close last month when our Japanese investors pulled out. No doubt they want to flood us with cheap squid ink from their newly refitted whaling fleet.”
Two-thousand satirists will descend on Parliament Square this Saturday to call for somebody, anybody, to step in and give the likes of Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Angela Eagle and Stephen Crabb a swift kick in the clunge. They are expected to face opposition from Welsh slate miners who predict a boom in trade that could more than compensate for the total loss of EU funding for essential regeneration projects.
