The Hamsters of Doom

The possibility of a worldwide pandemic appears on the current affairs horizon once again. Consequently, the media has once again started to act like an over-excited child on Christmas morning, wetting itself in excitement at the prospect of what mass fatalities, untold horror, chaos and a world shortage of Lemsip will do to increase its audience figures. Therefore, we thought it would be worthwhile to look at the previous Worldwide Pandemic Death Horror media feeding frenzy and see what – if anything – could be learnt from it.*

There is a place - just over there, past the chip shop - where the very first Hamster of Doom was found, just after it matriculated. Of course, we were all very shocked, concerned and slightly itchy just above the left knee.

As we know the recent Asian Bird-Flu incident had failed to ignite any hysteria amongst the populace with its disappointingly-low casualty figures of a blue-tit with a bit of a cough, a chicken with a sore throat and two parrots who needed a lie down in a darkened room for a couple of hours.

The British tabloid newspaper editors were - of course - getting desperate for a new scare story to help reverse the inexorable decline in their sales figures. All of them were on the look out for something - anything - they could use to whip the unthinking hordes into a frenzy of ill-informed speculation, panic and instinctive newspaper purchase.

It all began when some hamsters, already infected with a new strain of deadly Javanese Housemaid's Knee, were imported into this country by a gang of naked pogo-stick fetishists who used hamsters in certain unnatural acts involving whipped cream, adjustable spanners and volume 4 of the Encyclopaedia of Rude and Naughty Things (G-M).

At the time, the hamsters exhibited no signs of the disease, but a few weeks later when the naked fetishist began to repeatedly fall from their pogo-sticks in mid-bounce due to sudden attacks of Javanese Housemaid's Knee, it took the medical establishment only three emergency conferences in exotic holiday locations to realise that maybe something could be going on.

This particular strain of Javanese Housemaid's Knee soon spread from the naked pogo-stick fetishists to their friends, and then on from both of them out into the general public. This brought the epidemic to the attention of the tabloid editors who - with their traditional instinct for hyperbole - soon dubbed the infected small furry mammals The Hamsters of Doom, thus causing waves of panic, hysteria and outbreaks of psychosomatic itchy-knee syndrome. Almost inevitably, this resulted in the mass slaughter of many thousands of perfectly innocent - and disease-free - hamsters.

Of course, Javanese Housemaid's Knee can be highly contagious, but only under some fairly strict circumstances. As we all now know, due to the more than extensive media coverage, to catch it you first have to engage in a duet of Country and Western standards with an already infected hamster. Then you must invite the hamster out to a sit-down meal at a traditional British Chinese restaurant where you feed it Special fried Rice before taking it back home for a 'cup of coffee'. All of which was, of course, a naked pogo-stick fetishist's typical evening. So, while not entirely unlikely, it is relatively hard to catch this particular strain of Javanese Housemaid's Knee from a hamster. However, an infected human only has to share a copy of their local Street A-Z Atlas with an uninfected person in order to spread the virus.

Luckily, the relatively few human deaths (7) so far, and the lack of reports of any new cases for several weeks, as most experts agree, must mean that the epidemic is now beginning to abate. This means, as the panic subsides, the tabloid editors can now publish several articles savagely reprimanding the British general public for panicking, the rest of the media for stoking the fires of hysteria (that is - of course -apart from their own moderate, prudent and sensible selves) and the politicians for attempting to exploit the situation for short-term electoral advantage.

However, there is some good that has come from all this as the whole episode has been a cause of greatly-increased sales and - therefore - profits to the tabloid media and, undoubtedly, a great cause of joy and celebration for all the shareholders in that fine and noble industry. A situation, I'm sure you will agree, that should prove satisfying to us all, knowing that our magnificent British tabloid media has once again come through great adversity with flying colours.

*It is – obviously – that, as usual, nothing will be learnt and we will carry on making the same or similar cock-ups as we always have done in such similar circumstances.