Albert, The Stuffed Anaconda.

Until yesterday Albert the Stuffed Anaconda led a quiet life hanging under a shelf at the Foreign Office minding his own business. That all changed when William Hague, searching for a way to give his faltering career a much-needed boost, spied him and thought "That's the kind of project that will put my name in front of the public and increase my popularity." Fortunately it just so happened that he had a spare £10,000 of taxpayers money saved from last year's Christmas party and the rest is history. "This is the sort of epoch-making policy decision that makes the Tory party great," Lord Ashcroft, the party's official historian told the "News In Shorts." Our reporter caught up with Albert as he waited for his life-saving operation at an expensive private taxidermist in Harley Street; "I hadn't realised how badly I needed stuffing until William Hague pointed it out to me. As he said, the Tories have stuffed the rest of the country so why not me? His logic, when he put it that way, was irrefutable - so here I am." Our reporter asked him about his name. "Albert? It's not my real name of course - I was originally named Pedro. I asked once why I was called Albert by everyone here in Britain and was told it was something to do with Prince Albert's prize-winning anatomical peculiarity. I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean."