‘The Iron Lady is dead,’ came the cry from across the rooftops of London last night. No, don’t worry, or celebrate (depending upon your political persuasion), Margaret Thatcher is not dead – in fact quite the opposite. 

The source of this widespread, ill-founded rumour which quickly spread to all corners of the Commonwealth, was a morbidly-humoured Canadian diplomat who thought it might be funny to text a colleague with the news of the former British PM’s passing. Claims that the text message was an underhand attempt by the Canadian government to once and for all dispel the myth that Canucks’s have no sense of humour whatsoever, are as yet unfounded. However, it is the unwitting victim of this ‘hilarious’ prank who is having the last laugh, with her doctors confirming that her heart hasn’t skipped a beat since somebody first told her about the idea of a European Union.

Medical records show Baroness Thatcher is in remarkable health given that her creaking frame has had to endure 84-years of only sleeping 5 hours a night. ‘When I made the remark that she’ll never die, I didn’t mean it literally’, Thatcher’s Doctor assured us. ‘I was simply using hyperbolic language to highlight the fact that despite the odd assassination attempt, humiliation of multiple election defeats at the hand of the Labour Party since the end of her tenure, and daily attempts by Philistine trade unionists to attack her in the street, the Baroness is doing well.’

Through her PA, Thatcher released a brief statement this morning confirming that she will in fact one day die, but hoped to live long enough to see everybody still using public transport past the age of 26 to be extradited, owing to them being considered a professional failure in their working lives. She added that it would also be a bonus to see Tony Blair’s hairline recede all the way to the back of his ‘big fat, war-mongering’ head, before she enters the afterlife.

Incumbent Conservative leader David Cameron lightly joked that, ‘Given her national status, and importance in terms of British political history, if the ‘Iron Lady’ ever were to pop her clogs, one wonders if she would be a given a televised state funeral, or whether she has already stipulated in her will that she’d rather it be privatised?’