Having read last weekend that “the Jane Austen craze has now permeated every level of the culture”, I decided to Google this observation for myself.

Here is a random selection from the 794,000 entries:

United Breweries are delighted to announce that, following extensive theme-refurbishment, two of their keynote gastropubs have now reopened as The Sense & Whistle, in Notting Hill, and, in Wilmslow, Emma’s Head.

Nine days after her husband Ronald fell into the habit of answering her every domestic question with “It is a truth universally acknowledged that . . .”, West Byfleet dinner-lady Mrs Alice Healey, 57, shot him dead.

Following a frustrating period in the celebrity doldrums, hilarious comedy duo Cannon & Ball have just relaunched themselves as Pride & Prejudice.

The film world is abuzz with the thrilling news that Working Title is soon to go into production with the screen adaptation of Jane’s Fighting Ships. The finished script has already been handed to them by the incomparable Andrew Davies, who says that while remaining true in every significant aspect to the spirit of the original book, the screenplay inevitably contains just a few small changes necessitated by the translation to the cinema. Feisty Abbey Northanger, radiant commander of the nuclear submarine HMS Persuasion, will be played by Billie Piper, Russell Brand stars as Sir Woodhouse, her dreary First Sea Lord husband, while the Chinese winkler found miraculously alive in the belly of a giant squid tragically dismembered by friendly nuking — the man for whom Cap’n Abbey irresistibly falls after he is winched dripping from the freezing Aral Sea — is to be portrayed by Colin Firth.

Following their board’s unanimous decision, League Two stalwarts Mansfield Town are henceforth to play as Mansfield Park. Ecstatic manager Billy Dearden told Monday’s press conference: “We are over the wossname. This is the result we came for.” Asked whether the rebranding would affect their relations with arch rivals Chesterfield, Mr Dearden declared: “For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”

Challenged 18 times by Jeremy Paxman over the new caring Conservative Party policy document, Sensibility, Mr David Cameron finally admitted he hadn’t actually read it, but he was determined to take it on holiday with him.

Rung up by one of his most senior wags to inquire whether this would do, or would even more examples be required, the Editor of Rupert Murdoch’s fashionably retitled flagship, The Prejudice, told Mr Coren: “You have delighted us long enough.”

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