Back at the BP press conference

Chaotic scenes again today at the latest BP press conference. The newly-appointed chief media officer, Ms Lulu Mortenson, paid tribute to her predecessor Bernard Hofsnider whom she described as "A wonderful human being now pursuing exciting new opportunities," before going on to hotly deny that BP had in any way tried to influence the result of Saturday's World Cup match between England and the USA.

"OK, we have to accept that in many ways a draw was the right result for us here at BP, aware of tensions between the two countries right now. But there is absolutely no truth in the rumours that we hosed down anyone with money to ensure that America got a good result and had nothing new to whinge about, apart from, like, you know, the whole of the Gulf of Mexico and all those oily penguins. I don't know much about English soccer, but I've been briefed that the England team are quite capable of being crap all on their own."

British journalists at the press conference were seen to nod ruefully at this comment, but proceedings were then disrupted from the back of the room when Mr Bernard Hofsnider burst in wearing a Marty's Bar T-shirt and waving a bottle of 'Crazy Dog Detroit Bourbon'. He was heard to shout:

"What a crock! Those guys were told weeks ago!! OK, we never paid Robert Green cuz we never thought they'd be dumb enough to pick him, but Jeez Louise, the others were told three-nil to the US of A. Sheeit. Guess we shoulda post-dated the cheques..."

At this point Mr Hofsnider was tazered repeatedly by security guards, and is now said to be "resting". Ms Mortenson issued a press release later categorically denying everything, whether or not anyone was saying it.