Official News - page 4

GALLAGHER'S BACK ON FORM WITH NEW SUMMER CHARM

Following the shock and horror of their cheap, tawdry keyring accessory last month - if you recall, it was a very tacky tin foil hat which was not in keeping with their usual stylish offerings - Gallagher's have this week announced their new charm. The rich and famous throughout the Solar System, who make something of a fetish of collecting every charm available to hang on their exclusive TenBrane keyrings, can heave a collective sigh of relief because the store has returned to form by providing one of the quirky gadgets which they do so well.

The charm for this month is a tiny laser-powered BBQ. It's very small indeed; not big enough to actually cook anything much in the way of chunks of dead animals or crustaceans. Anton Gallagher was being very mysterious about the source of these miniature devices, but we did a bit of poking around - we are, after all, investigative newsdroids and we don't just digest and regurgitate company press-releases; we want to get to the facts behind the PR spin! - and we discovered a box of discarded instruction manuals in the back of the shop's warehouse, which as well as explaining how to operate the BBQs gave clues as to their origins. The give-away was the picture on the front of the manuals, showing the gadget being used to cook some baby squarm tentacles.

Being droids, we are not experts on alien cuisine, but we knew a man who was so we headed down the road for a quick visit to Godot's snack bar. The man himself was there, along with his waiters Vladimir and Estragon, and they were happy to tell us more than we could ever have wanted to know about squarm. The key fact that we gleaned: squarm is a delicacy across the Galaxy, but it can only be found on its native planet of Capella IV, where it swims in the milky seas and is caught in specially built traps. Godot showed us a picture and it looked quite disgusting - a blobby creature with long slimy tentacles. Ugh!

All attempts to farm squarm, on that planet or elsewhere, have failed; the creature does not thrive in captivity. The flesh of the squarm is processed and turned into a variety of dishes enjoyed by the natives of Capella IV, but the product that is prized above all others is the tentacle tip of the young squarm, which is traditionally grilled on a special portable cooking machine.

It looked like we had found the origin of the laser BBQ!

Returning to the warehouse where we found the manuals, we wondered why they were being sold as charms rather than as working BBQs, and then we found in one corner a heap of discarded power packs, removed from the Mark IV lasers that made up the cooking part of the apparatus. The power packs were all stamped with a Galactic Administration stamp, condemning them as faulty and not to be sold to members of the public or used in any products being sold. It seemed Gallagher's had picked up a job lot of faulty BBQs on the cheap, and converted them from functioning cooking machines into keyring accessories to be sold for a huge profit.

Ah well, that's capitalism for you!

Buy one of these snazzy new charms from Gallagher's with 'BUY LASER BBQ' - as usual, it costs one slithy tove. Then put it on display so everyone can see you showing it off with 'WEAR 2006 LASER BBQ'.

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