Cardiff, Wales - A royal Zimmer Frame totter-about came to an abrupt end today when Queen Elizabeth was declared 'brain dead' in one of her daft asymmetrical hats.
Palace embalmers swooped in droves at the news, each bearing official mummification warrants last used to expedite the tasteful stuffing of the Old Queen Mum back in March 2002.
Their sudden opportunistic appearance did little to cheer up the octogenarian Cold War soak whose 'Orf their bloody heads!' exhortation was something of a predictable welcome.
Courtiers blamed an eerie Largactil Shuffle pallor about HM's face for Penisarwaen Village, Gwynedd residents' quite reasonable assumptions that they were seeing the apparition of an animated corpse.
"It's the old dear's anti-psychotic medication, chaps," Palace Lord Chamberlain Lord Luce-Cannon told panicking wellwishers demanding the facts amid conflicting reports, "makes her look a bit Grim Reaper-ish after half a dozen large whiskies."
A government-sponsored Co-Op Funeral Plan send-off remains on ice.
