TIN ARM ALLEY, Public NME, Friday (N! News) — After telling the others to fuck off several years ago, Robbie Williams has, after a string of epic failures, come grovelling back to Take That in the hope of enough income to pay for his, er, mineral water.

“Williams? I vaguely recall the name,” said Gary Barlow, leader of the band. “First name’s ‘Cunt,’ right? ‘Fuckhead’? ‘Shitstick’? Something like that.”

After the band’s reformation in 2005, Barlow successfully matured the former boy band’s sound and achieved two hit albums. “I understand there’s some twatrag who wants to rejoin Take That,” he spat. “I was inclined to courier him a turd in a box, but someone offered to back several dumptrucks filled with gold bullion up to our houses if we let the dogfucker on the same stage as us. He’ll have to start at the bottom, of course, but I’m sure there’s lots we can do to make him feel as welcome as he deserves.”

Williams discussed the reunion on Jonathan Ross this evening. “Gary’s just joshing. We’re getting on great — even when we weren’t speaking, he was keeping in touch, sending me press clippings of every Take That reunion chart position and sold-out arena show. I was even along on Mark Owen’s stag night. I’d thought it was traditional to tie the groom to a lamp post with a bucket on his head, his pants off and his cock painted bright red, but I took it in good spirits. Love the guys. Love ’em.”

A reunion tour may take place next year. “I’ve got Robbie’s rider sorted out,” said Barlow. “Ours is a suitable selection of wines, spirits and juices and I’ve got to check the portaloo outlet for his. Can’t wait to work with him again.”

EX FACTOR, Smersh, Tuesday (N! News) — Pop android Cheryl Cole has lost her fight to build a secret underground swimming pool in her supervillain’s lair high in the craggy mountains of Guildford, despite claiming “spies in the sky” would try to snap her in her bikini if she had an outdoor pool.

Mrs Cole claimed she was too famous to sunbathe in her own garden for fear of being buzzed from the air. “Them Russkies will stop at nothing to beat England,” she said. “Ash told me they beat us at football last week.”

The Coles have already transformed their classic English cottage with three storeys above ground, five below, a helipad and an aircraft hangar. They wanted to construct a 12m×5m below-ground pool with a gym, spa, sauna and steam room, a missile silo, a radar scanner and a laser space beam to take out interstellar paparazzi UFOs to stop them being pictured in “intimate episodes.” The council also refused permission for a second anti-aircraft gun.

“It’s so sad,” said Mrs Cole, “now I’ll just have to wander around topless in my own garden and be photographed shagging Ashley in the pool with no protection from photographers whatsoever. Saturday afternoons, yeah? Get my left side if you can, that tit’s bigger.” She said Ashley had insisted she was still to address him as “Thunderbird One” in bed.

Style icon Cheryl was voted Lad Wanker Magazine’s “Dumbest Othewise-Cute Woman In The World 2009” earlier this year. Police have warned citizens that her new album has just been released.

1. X Factor contestants are grown in vats in a factory in south Wales, using repurposed equipment from the Australian soap opera factories of the 1980s. The replicants are programmed with a fictional past that always involves a dead parent. In six seasons, no-one involved has yet bothered writing a second fictional past.
   

2. Their rudimentary brains are removed before filming and replaced with the control mechanism from a clockwork mouse, doubling their IQs and improving their personalities.

3. Dannii Minogue is an all-Australian suburban android who has come to Britain to annihilate humanity after failing quality control in the Australian vat factory and escaping into the desert.

4. Louis Walsh bought the factory equipment from the Reg Grundy corporation in the late 1990s, with several false starts employing its products in Ireland.

5. The X Factor mentoring process involves poking the contestants with sticks while still in the vat. Ethics societies had originally expressed grave concerns, but, after interviewing the vat creatures and assessing their personalities, have unanimously heralded the process as not merely acceptable but a moral imperative, and asked when they could have a go too.

6. Cheryl Cole does not understand how her presence on the show is itself a cruel, cruel taunt.

7. The vat creations must snort an entire bottle of fake tan every six hours to preserve their bodies from decay. Those surviving the show can often be found on street corners, pale and shriveled, asking passers-by for fiddy pee for hair gel and pleading to let them audition for them.

8. Rikki Loney is actually descended from creatures who emerge from bogs to steal your children. His hair was made by his mum for him from pain, horror and the tears of dying infants.

9. Ben Elton cleverly satirised the X Factor process in his novel Chart Throb. Mr Elton prefers more artistically substantial endeavours in his own work, such as a gratuitous sequel to Phantom of the Opera set in America. Next you know he’ll try writing a West End musical based on the works of the Sex Pistols. Can’t wait to see what he does with “Bodies”.

10. Simon Cowell hates you more than you will ever know. Although if you watch X Factor you might get an inkling.

SEVENTH HEAVEN, London WC2, Saturday (LNBT) — The first London tourist office specifically for LGBT (which stands for “Young, White, Gay, Male and Middle-Class”) tourist needs will be opening later this year.

The idea is the brainchild of a gay bar owner, who plans to run it out of the ground floor of the bar in question. “All people of all sexual orientations, cultures and diversity should be able to come to London and know where to go to feel fully free to be their young, white, gay, male and middle-class selves. We take diversity seriously in the gay scene. And, er, B, L, T. We do serve sandwiches. Yep.”

The service will provide young white middle-class gay men of all colours, ages, gender identities and backgrounds with the important nuances of local information: which bar in Soho playing deafening techno has selfish, two-timing prick tease bastards, which bar in Soho playing deafening techno has miserable, bitchy queens and which bar in Soho playing deafening techno will leave you feeling generally depressed, fucked over and ripped off. It hopes to expand to bars in Vauxhall playing deafening techno by early next year.

“We will of course take the ‘L,’ ‘T’ and ‘B’ seriously. Lesbians are welcome in the bars as long as they don’t try to get in on Fridays or Saturdays, and those trannies are welcome provided they have the proper paperwork certifying their claimed gender. We’d happily cater for bisexuals if they existed and weren’t just fooling themselves.”

PRIORY OF SION, All The Way To The Bank, Friday (NNN) — International best-seling author Dan Brown is in tears over the critical reception to his latest book, The Last Symbol.

“Renowned author Dan Vinci staggered through the pile of reviews,” said Mr Brown, snapping his fingers to signal one of his several oiled and naked houseboys to refill his cognac, “smelt burning flesh, and knew it was his own. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.”

Critics have reviled Brown’s books, famed for their implausible plots, flat characters, bogus exposition and talking down to the reader. And the squillions of copies they sell.

“Vinci was heartbroken,” said Mr Brown. “The critics’ snobbish jealousy was like a splinter in his soul. A line of italics appeared in this conversation.”

The latest book deals with a Freemason conspiracy to control what appears on the review pages of major newspapers. A heroic author, Dan Vinci, attempts to break through the conspiracy through sheer force, detailed italic exposition and a battering ram made of pulp.

“It was so hard to cope with the hatred,” said Mr Brown, sobbing into his Dom Perignon and staining his bank statement with tears. “Didn’t the critics know how bad things could be? People could have been reading Jeffrey Archer.”