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Technical problems that stranded Eurostar passengers in the Channel Tunnel and caused three-day delays have been blamed on “high volumes of snow”, “low temperatures” and “trains that don’t work for shit”, according to a spokesman for the company.

“We have been incredibly unfortunate, in that we have experienced a combination of particularly fluffy snow and cold air meeting the warmer air of the tunnel. Couple that with engineering designed to fail catastrophically at the first sign of condensation and you’re bound to get trouble,” the spokesman continued. “It’s an unlucky situation where we just happen to have come across the ‘wrong type of train’, so to speak, and then built an entire fleet out of them.”

Eurostar endured tough criticism of its performance in the run-up to Christmas, but the company has insisted that the disruption is solely down to a coincidence of unforeseeable circumstances. “It’s not just that we had snow, but also very cold conditions, and that combination is completely unprecedented,” said Eurostar’s spokesman.

“However the real kicker, which we just couldn’t have guessed, is what a shower of shit those cheap-ass trains were. If we had known that in advance, I’m sure we wouldn’t have based our entire business model on their remaining in good working order.”

As well as its technical deficiencies, Eurostar has been attacked for keeping passengers aboard trains for around 16 hours without providing food and water, and for failing to give timely updates on the situation to passengers or the media. Again, the company cited bad luck as an explanation.

“Well, clearly, again, that’s just an unfortunate sequence of events that was unexpectedly set in motion when we failed to specify basic human empathy as a requirement of the job description of working as a Eurostar middle manager. That was regrettably compounded by our completely unforeseeable decision to appoint a PR agency staffed by cretins.

“Perhaps there are lessons we can learn here, but the important things to take out of this episode are that we have been very, very unlucky and that we accept no liability for negligence alleged or actual.”