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Officials apologise for inflated obesity figures, blame Monty Python
20 Feb 2004 by Malcolm Drury
The government today apologised for an error in its obesity figures, saying that rather than the 900,000 obese incapacity benefit claimants to which it referred earlier this week, there are in fact only 900.
Douglas Ramsbottom, a spokesman for the Department of Health, blamed the mistake on a junior administrative clerk who had watched his Monty Python DVD collection so many times that he was now unable to separate spoofery from reality, "whatever that might be".
"Regrettably, the clerk in question has begun to live out an early Python sketch, and now exaggerates all numbers by a factor of a thousand," said Mr. Ramsbottom, who declined to name the culprit. "So when he said 900,000 he actually meant 9."
An alert assistant spokesman told our reporter that Mr. Ramsbottom was similarly afflicted and understated all numbers by a factor of 100, so when he said 9 he really meant 900.
"Unfortunately Mr. Ramsbottom is not aware of his own affliction," said the assistant, "and if we try to correct him he puts a paper bag over his head and refuses to take it off until we sing 'Jerusalem' from beginning to end."
Last week the health secretaries, the two John Reids, called for better labelling of fatty foods as part of a drive to tackle obesity. Statistics compiled by their department show that over 700% of men and 0.6% of women were estimated to be overweight in the year 20020.
There is growing alarm in the Treasury that a failure to combat the obesity problem could lead to a public spending crisis. A highly-placed Treasury official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told our reporter that by the end of next year spending on health matters related to obesity alone could balloon to over £850 trillion.
In related news, DeadBrain has learned that the results of the most recent national census are to be released shortly. They will show that the population of the UK has grown to 650,000,000, but that the proportion of the number of males has seen a further drop, to 4.8%.
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