A group of subversive Chechen pensioners, on a Saga holiday in St. Petersburg, were blamed and grilled for last night’s bombing of a McDonald’s restaurant. Although the fast food chain has promised to compensate any survivors with a McPolonium Happy Meal in the Urals, its public image in Russia remains at its most ambiguous since Mikhail Gorbachev took a pan scourer to his birthmark, and told his people to embrace the 3-day queue for a quarterpounder with relish.

“Things were so much simpler when State own everything,” said employee of the afternoon, Anna Thedayov. “We had Tsarburger, Tsarbucks and Tsars In Their Eyes. I was contestant on this programme, and won tub of lard for my excellent impression of Anna Karenina as shot-putter at 1936 Olympics. Before they reveal she was a man.”

Whilst McDonald’s had originally allayed fears of any radical, post-Glasnost shake-up, by thoughtfully including exploitation, slavery and archaic working conditions as part of its standard contract of employment, staff were outraged to discover they would be obliged to consume a daily diet of McNuggets and French fries, widely considered a violation of human rights.

“You know what keep me here?” said another employee. “Apart from compulsory Rohypnol every night. Possibility of promotion to assistant executive cheese-melter, at week-ends, in autumn. That is cutting edge of business. Where you can mix metaphors.”

In recent years, Chechen culture has been blamed for everything from KFC and Norman Collier to an outbreak of bird flu near Vladivostok, given its uncanny resemblance to the word “chicken”, when pronounced with a South Muscovite accent, during fellatio, in an aquarium full of custard.

Sunday’s dramatic events also come in the wake of the long-running McLibelov trial, in which the restaurant is accused of plagiarising the greatest catchphrase since Stalin addressed the inmates of a Gulag labour camp, and said, “I don’t know about you, campers, but I’m lovin’ it. Have a nice day!”