X Factor Dannii ‘plans return to natural habitat’

The celebrated Australian Dannii Minogue is to be returned to her country, following reports that it is now a safe place to live. The 38-year-old Minogue, who has lived in London for years and even forged a singing and television career – marking her out as one of the country’s most successful immigrants, having never had to work in a bar or hotel– is said to be delighted at the news, and is preparing an album of traditional Australian songs in celebration.

Australia has only recently been cleared for human habitation by the United Nations, following years of violent rebellions along its east coast. The UN retains a strong peacekeeping presence in the centres of both Brisbane and Sydney, but it is thought that even this will be scaled back in the coming months.

Book news: Archer tops bestseller list, eats lamb chop

The redoubtable Jeffrey Archer reports from his ceaseless publicity drive, telling us that his latest novel, A Prisoner Of Birth (regular readers may remember his thorough documenting of the quirksome production process), has ascended to number one in the Australian bestseller list. News Hour is sad to hear that the celebrated author was said to have marked the news ‘sat in my hotel room alone…with a lamb chop’. Such were the pressures of his selfless promotional tour that the author confessed he ‘lay down…at 9pm for a brief rest, and didn’t wake until 3am’. Tough times indeed.

The disgraced peer has an excellent track record in Australia, having previously sold out two print runs of his tome Sons Of Fortune in the country. The book was described in its own publicity as a: “powerful tale of twins separated by fate and re-united by destiny” and did well despite Archer being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure at the time of its release, and so unable to embark on the usual carousel of book signings, interviews and promotional junkets that climax in the solo consumption of a lamb chop. (Could Archer have been echoing a previous, enforced solo dinner in this recent celebration?)

Without wishing to offend, we wonder if the collective consciousness of Australia’s once convict-heavy populace created an instant empathy between the book-buying public and the imprisoned Archer.