Controversial self-styled web terrorist and housewife superstar Roberta Swipe has died at the age of 48 in a state-sponsored Bed & Breakfast in Norfolk of an unspecified groin ailment. It's the second time in as many months that the barely known and much-despised contrarian author of 'My Life in the Bush of Tights' and other spectacularly unsuccessful (not to mention unpublished) works has taken her own life in a failed attempt to drum up some semblance of a readership. Swipe, once again, leaves behind a harem of fictitious celebrity wives due to her belated conversion to Islam/a partially successful sex change - the harem is thought to include Bette Stove, Tara Palmer Tompkinson and Lyndsey de Paul to name but eight. However, under stringent new anti-terrorist laws the actual names of the estimated 412 concubines cannot be published, only communicated by semaphor at night within a 12 mile radius of Hartlepool. Swipe's Tabbyssinian cat, Monty, was once again unavailable for comment.
Tributes to the much mourned (not to mention deceased) broadcaster and wit have been pouring in from across the blogosphere. The grief-fuelled outpourings of Titty Abimuss, author of the popular, mildly erotic and highly instructive 'Girl with a One Track Mind' blog were pretty representative. 'Roberta was a much misunderstood artist who even bore a vague resemblance to a normal human being at times', wept the celebrated author who is frequently wheeled out at random by BBC news 24 and so on to pontificate on all matters vaguely related to the internet (or sex - so she'd be a dead cert for sex on the internet stories, actually, now I gthink of it) in a lull between youthful sexual partners. 'She didn't help matters much by writing in Swahili and changing the address of her blog every five minutes, but I for one will very much miss her, if only because she was actually quite a dab hand at spelling words such as chlamydia and such like that I often have a problem with - and before you get all snooty, you try leafing casually through a Chambers concise when you've got half a hundred weight of key grip going hell for leather with a chamois over your private portions in the back of a catering trailer...'
The news of Swipe's repeated demise comes at a time of growing concerns over internet freedom. 'Roberta was many things - and most of those involved wearing badly laddered pantyhose and rather too much foundation - but at least you knew where you stood with her; usually with your back firmly up against the wall!' commented Van Istski, rhythm guitarist and farfisa organist with popular post-punk trio the Labial Tizers. However, in a move designed to placate his angry europhobe backbenchers, Prime Minister David Cameron is said to be considering a public beheading and massed booing of Swipe's corpse as an example to others. A Downing Street insider opined, 'this Swipe bint is a tremendous example of the harm that an unrestrained and feral internet can do. These people can say whatever they please and it's often downright offensive to someone or other, somewhere on the planet which is, if you ask me, unspeakably beastly. And I should know, I frequently fagged for Nicholas Soames so there's little I don't know on the subject of unspeakable beastliness, I can tell you. Skidmarks like tractor tryes is only the half of it, ducky. Now, all we're calling for is sensible regulation and light monitoring so that we know exactly what everyone is writing at any given time and can intervene to have them locked up in order to stop anyone who might otherwise try to blow up our citizens from being offended.'
For reasons of national security, the Roberta Swipe Show blog will be closed down at midnight tonight.
