London - (Ass Mess): The Bishop of Southfork, the Rt Ravin Tom Butler, has blamed spooky pranksters for spiking his drinks at an Irish Embassy Xmas shindig last week that led to him being found naked in the back of a rolls-royce next morning by bemused polaroid-snapping traffic wardens.
The ticket-slappers immediately alerted vice-squad officers from New Scotland Yard after His Eminence started soliciting them to perform unspeakable acts of gross depravity upon his person before realising that they were also newly-converted parishioners from his Halleluia Mission Tabernacle less than half a mile away.
When the boys in blue arrived to take him in for questioning, Butler apparently came over all queer and claimed he was under the influence of amnesia after the head of MI5 Dame Eliza Doolittle had stalked him at the previous evening's reception before dropping a large mickey fin into his communion wine spritzer.
Somehow or other a number of offending snapshots then managed to find their way into the latest issue of Halo! magazine and attracted the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who immediately called Butler in for a stiff dressing-gown for the ecclesiastical equivalent of the off-side rule on copyright infringement and royalty-sharing.
A few of the fateful evening's party revellers had also given interviews to the magazine, some claiming that Butler had been misbehaving badly that night, saying that a large swelling upon his person was the result of a recent mugging. Fortunately no one had taken up his offer for a peek up the cassock to verify the offending lump.
Today Butler's position hangs in the balance. If he gets the sack for this lapse in moral rectitude he could conceivably end up head-hunted by a rival tabernacle organization in nearby Isle of Dogs who last month advertised in The Tablets religious magazine for an in-house pastor for their youth outreach workers office specialising in abstinence programmes for fallen women.
A statement is expected later in the week.
