Wetherspoons to create monopoly on drunks

Wetherspoons has announced plans to create 10,000 new jobs in 250 new pubs, leading to fears that it will become the Tescos for bums. The company has stressed that it is not looking for competition but local pubs fear that the new pubs will be cutting in on their share of sad old men who start drinking at noon.

Proprietor of the Cat and Bunyon pub in Bromley Ed Berry said, "I've known some of these pissheads for years. There's Brian who is on a gin drip, old Mikey who likes to discuss the issues of the day with the dartboard and Wally who keeps on telling everyone that Destiny's Child stole his act.

"If they start drinking elsewhere in dimly lit shacks with cut-price drinks, I don't know what I'll do. The pub trade is bad enough as it is. You've got the recession, the smoking ban plus the fact that fewer people want to drink in a dingy bar with some bloke shouting at a dartboard."

However, the head of the Wetherspoons chain, Cecil Frimby tried to calm the fears of local publicans. "Wetherspoons started off very small. I saw a man drinking alone in a shed. And I thought to myself, 'Why don't we take that and make it bigger?' This is why all Wetherspoons are basically warehouses with booze. There's no music, no atmosphere, no football. But you do just pay two pound fifty for a Red Bull and vodka. That's why our motto is 'If you're having a good time, you've probably come to the wrong place.'"

Woody Allen's new film with Carla Bruni: REVEALED

In a move that has shocked the cinematic world, Woody Allen has cast an attractive woman to star in a film in which people talk about metaphysics and Hungarian farming techniques. The lead role will be taken by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, First Lady of France and 2,305th Lady of Mick Jagger. Allen explained why he had chosen Bruni-Sarkozy. "Well, you know, she has this aesthetic, a minimalist conception of what Sartre is trying to explain when he talks about negating moral nihilism. Plus I know she has a thing for older guys."

Bruni-Sarkozy agreed with Allen's estimation saying, "It's true that I have penchant for the mature man. I've had relationships with Eric Clapton, Julius Caesar, Socrates and a two month thing with Apollo." Bruni-Sarkozy also admitted that being married to French President Nicolas Sarkozy had provided her with enough experience to deal with a short man with diminishing respect on the world stage.

The Chum Bucket can also reveal part of the script for Allen's new film, No Need For Viagra, which is set in Paris and features a seventy year old neurotic intellectual called Buddy Gallen struggling to find time for his eight mistresses.

We open on a street cafe. Buddy Gallen is sitting with a copy of Baudelaire's Fleur du Mal and making improvements. Along comes Ella Nympho, a beautiful and radiant woman with the libido of a high school football team and unresolved issues with her father.

Nympho: Excuse me, I couldn't help notice that you're reading French poetry. That surely marks you out as being intellectual and by logical extension, a good person.

Gallen: Well, good is such a bourgeois term. Beneath the veneer of a socially applied patriarchal moral system, I think we're all just animals.

Nympho: That's fascinating, do you mind if I sit down?

Gallen: Of course but be careful not to knock over my oxygen cylinder. My bronchitis is really playing up.

Nympho: You have bronchitis? I find that so attractive. Would you have sex with me and then agonise whether your ex-wife was right about Ingmar Bergman?

Gallen: You got it. But we'll first need to stop off for incontinence pads.