The Iron-on Chancellor

Chancellor Alistair Darling today demonstrated his courage, his independence and his initiative by standing up to no less a man than the President of the United States. He has been holding private talks with British financiers who wish to head off President Obama's tough new curbs on the financial sector.

Chancellor Darling proclaimed before a packed audience of senior bankers: "If anyone is going to boss me around and treat me as their lick-spittle it is going to be the Investment Banking community."

The statement met with rapturous applause and in some cases tears (of laughter), as bankers congratulated one another on their "restrained sodomising of the Chancellor."

Mr Darling, frequently displaying his trademark sycophancy, continued: "You gentlemen have done so much for the British people, for the British taxpayer over recent years. And what is more you have made men like myself feel important, feel needed. It would be no exaggeration to say that I view myself as your humble servant."

He concluded: "And when Labour loses the next election, might I be so bold as to suggest that I do in fact become your humble servant in a rather more literal sense... if I may say so, in a more directly employed sense."

The audience was clearly moved and the Chancellor then proceeded to wander around the hall, pressing flesh and continuing his ass-licking 'offensive' with individual members of the banking community until the early hours of the morning, or until they had grown tired of rogering him senseless.