Following a purely philanthropic gesture in lending the British Prime Minister his Florida mansion for several weeks, Bee Gee Robin Gibb described his devastating omission from the New Year Honours list as “tragedy”. Speaking through a new pair of freshly-enamelled falsetto teeth, the singer lamented, “When he told me “I’d pay for it”, I thought he meant a life peerage, not 1970s disco fashion". The Blairs, whose low-key holiday began well as their plane discreetly overshot the runway at Miami International airport and crashed into a herd of paparazzi, said they had just concentrated on “stayin’ alive”.

Staunch anti-colonialist Linda Bellos was delighted to receive an Order of the British Empire. Bellos, 49, who chaired the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender advisory group to the Metropolitan Police, was rewarded for “services to diversity, bureaucratic titillation and dungaree subculture”. “If my work has managed to save at least one hairy-chested Carmen Miranda look-alike from being shot twelve times by the local constabulary for jumping a ticket-barrier, then I’ll be happy,” she said, proudly. When challenged about her acceptance of the award she retorted, “I don't see the ambiguity. As a black, Jewish, lesbian, bisexual, it’s impossible to take it the wrong way”.

Clive Bennett, the Chief Executive of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), was also granted an OBE as a result of a computer error. It is currently in the post, and will arrive about February, 2009. Rumours that the Blairs have been offered the loan of his Rolls Royce during a luxury fortnight on the Swansea Riviera were denied by the Prime Minister’s solicitors, Grinn & Barrett. “That’s just ‘Clive talkin’, said a well-tanned spokesman in a white suit and trilby. “Anyway, Tony’s playing safe next year - it's Gary Glitter, and Phuket”.