People have recently called Martin “fucking mental” for attempting the epic journey which he’ll start at the end of March.

But it’s recently been found that most people believe there is still daily bombing in the city, despite the fact the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990.

“There’s a saying about dicey ghetto areas,” said Walsh. “People say ‘it’s like Beirut round there’, but that’s just something people used to say in the late eighties, when Beirut was more like Tripoli is today.”

Indeed, Expert Psychologists have discovered a syndrome known as Total Chronological Disconnect, also known as 1984 syndrome, where people believe that foreign wars last pretty much forever.

Researcher Glen Cave said “I first experienced this when discussing my 1982 holiday to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav punch-up was about a decade later, but still everyone asks ‘were you scared? Did you get bombed?’. They seem to not realise that wars do not always last forever.”

Indeed, 1984 syndrome readily applies to Lebanon. “It’s been twenty years since Beirut was a warzone,” says Cave, “but people still seem to think it’s getting bombed to shit every single day. Seriously, you know anyone who says bollocks to Malaga, let’s go to Lebanon this year? No. Neither do I.”

Walsh plans to cycle up to fifty miles a day on his trusty Halfords Apollo bike, which he bought second-hand for twenty quid off a bloke in the Market Square who was holding a bolt cutter. “It’ll probably be alright,” he said, “if it looks a bit sketchy I’ll divert, I hear Benghazi is nice this time of year. Frankly I’m less concerned about bombs and more about getting a decent pint!”

Well, he is a St Neots man now after all.

The Citizen Editor’s friend Martin Walsh is actually cycling from Dover to Beirut to raise money for MAP, a charity which provides medical services to Palestinians. To find out more or to donate please visit his Virgin Money Giving page. Remember to Giftaid it!

I have just read your article on excuses for multiple addictions. I feel that the research does not adequately address those of us addicted to casual sex.

Frankly, the amount of barely-legal skirt in the Priory every Friday night makes it hard enough, as well as making it difficult when suffering from this affliction. What are Expert Scientists doing to address this issue?

I have spent my entire month’s salary on Durex and rohypnol, and there is no state-sponsored therapy for me. I may have to move towns.

Jackson Nicholson, Wheatsheaf Road.^

A report in the national press today explains that some people are missing a subunit of a receptor that tells them when they have had enough nicotine, making them born smokers.

But in a typical misappropriation of the research, locals have seized on the report as a way of explaining addiction to absolutely anything.

“This is brilliant,” said local crack-fiend Hans Usborne. “Now I can do all the crack I want, and blame it on a faulty crack receptor. I fucking love crack!” 29 stone mum Sharon Corrigan, 43, of Field Cottage Road, agreed. “I finally know why I feel the need to eat a bucket of fried chicken every single day – my chicken receptor is all to cock!”

Local health chiefs were disgusted by the news. NHS spokesman Mike Primark said “This is completely irresponsible. The research was only on nicotine, so yes, the town’s thousands of smokers do have a potential reason for their continuing need to spend £6.85 a day on their precious Marlboro Lights. But it by no means affects everyone, and certainly doesn’t extend to any other drug or addiction – unless people are mixing nicotine into chocolate then the fatties have no excuse.”

Local high-end chocolate manufacturers B&B Chocolat said development of a 70% cocoa bar with 0.5mg nicotine was underway. “If people are going to explain away their addictions to cocaine, weed, pills, meth, m-cat, MDMA, skag, angel dust, alphabetti-spaghetti, PCP, BZP, AZT, temazapam, diazepan, ketamine and a list of drugs no-one’s thought of yet, as well as burgers, chicken, kebabs, tea, coffee, Red Bull, Fosters, Smirnoff, Wham bars, sandwiches, supercider, Special Brew, Lottery scratchcards, lighter fluid, overpriced French bottled water, Sara Lee gateaux, flapjacks, curry, pizza, special-fried rice and fucking Lambrini – then why shouldn’t they have a lovely high-quality luxury snack to be addicted to as well?” said a spokesman.

In a statement today (Thursday), council leader Julia Wayward revealed that, despite sitting to the west of Prime Meridian, St Neots is in fact approximately six minutes ahead of GMT.

“The Meridian line crosses through Cambridgeshire,” said CERN spokesman Guillaume la Trec, whose organisation’s Large Hadron Collider of Doom is rumoured to be beneath the Market Square. “In fact, it crosses the A14 near St Ives, to the east of St Neots, meaning the town ‘as always been somewhat behind ze times.”

However, with faint mumblings about the curvature of the Earth and the magnetic pull of Little Barford power station, la Trec’s team have been able to demonstrate that St Neots is, in fact, roughly six minutes on from GMT, and seven minutes fourteen seconds in front of Cambridge.

“The ramifications are of epic proportions,” said council spokesperson Holly Davidson. “Technology companies relocating to St Neots can make sure they are always one step ahead of the competition, by getting to the office six minutes early.”

Councillor van der Whitevanman added, “Imagine when our cinema is built and can show the latest releases six minutes before everyone else. This will be brilliant for the local economy. The extra traffic will devastate the High Street though.”

Not everyone was pleased with the announcement. “The introduction of Ouse Mean Time means that I’ll have to reset my watch every time I go to work in Bedford,” said Jellicoe Place man Simon Harlem, 28, “and that’s going to get right on my tits.”

The town’s publicans were up in arms as well. “This means we’ll have to shut earlier than pubs elsewhere,” said Lee Fosters, 19, of the Corner House, “and we’ve already got that fucking Wetherspoons to contend with – it’s just not on.”

“My house is cracking up,” said Burnt Close resident Sarah Camistic, “and if it goes on much longer I will be too.”

“It’s blatantly the fault of them scientists,” said Eaton Socon man Max Speed. “There’s probably a black hole underneath Eynesbury, which is ever so slowly, imperceptably shrinking all the houses.

“Of course, cement and bricks don’t like being shrunk, so they’re falling to pieces instead.”

Long-suffering CERN spokesman Guillaume la Trec said in an email to the Citizen that he refused to believe the LHC had anything to do with the houses in Eynesbury sinking, and maybe if we had got French builders to build them they would be better quality. “That’s as maybe,” retorted Camistic, “but we’d still be waiting for them to finish their thirtieth Gauloise of the day, and thirty years on we’d barely have foundations.”

Local geologist Garph Jonas, 27, offered another explanation for the phenomenon. “I reckon there’s some massive stone-age caves under Eynesbury, or possibly a mass grave for plague victims from Huntingdon. We should probably knock all the houses down on a whim to check.”

In other news, the Citizen reported this story without speaking to any councillors. Well done us.

The town’s location in a geographically distinct “bowl” or dip means that the temperature in St Neots is on average 1.5º higher than Huntingdon or Cambridge, but also means that locals are protected from the worst of the weather.

“You can really notice it if you visit one of the few streets which is up on the ‘rim’, so to speak,” said local Expert Scientist Jim James of CERN. “Have a wander through Bean Close next time it’s been icy, and the frost and snow stays on the ground that little bit longer because they’re not in the dip.”

However, St Neotians have refuted these claims, laying the blame squarely at the door of Pathfinder House. “It’s a disgrace,” said Eynesbury resident Peter Husbanick, 31. “Huntingdon always gets the better deal: more cinemas, more traffic lights, more chavs, and now more snow.”

Town councillor Terrence Dougall, 81, said “I’ll have to look into this. I’ll ask the District Council some questions without the use of any punctuation and see what they have to say about it.”

The Citizen contacted a local pensioner for a quote as well. Ethel Cotton, 79, ranted that “In my day we had ice on the inside of the windows, and the Thames used to freeze over, but we strapped wooden planks – with the nails still in them – to our feet and used them to ski the forty-two miles to school every day.”

Betty Bean, 61, regaled all who would listen with stories of how “When I were a lass, we had frost on the inside of the windows!”

Meanwhile, Jake Neskini, 22, said he had had enough of hearing about “ice on the Thames” from his parents.

It is thought that any adverse weather automatically triggers a response in those over fifty, who then feel compelled to inform their assorted descendants about how they’ve “never had it so good”. As well as the classic ice on the inside of the windows and the Thames freezing solid, other favourites include “the time it was so foggy you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face but still went to work” and “that month when it rained for twenty-eight days and we had to swim eight miles to school”.

Historians said that few of the stories had been proven, but that over-fifties had a great capacity for “mis-remembering” details. Dayve Cheesington, an Expert Scientist from Longsands School’s new Ernulf campus, said that he intended to look into the situation more deeply. “If you speak to my nan you get the impression that in the 1940′s, Britain was permanently under an icy lake of foggy water, but of course they ‘muddled through’. I think this is pure bollocks of the ‘A-levels were harder in my day’ variety.”

Cheesington will be interviewing anyone over fifty who can remember their own name accurately within the next few weeks.

Under directive 09/447/EC, the terms “spitting distance” and “a stone’s throw” could soon be disappearing, particularly from promotional literature.

EU spokesman Johann Rohan said today, “It is clear to me that St Neots is not “a stone’s throw” away from Cambridge. Neither is your own riverside park “spitting distance” from the Market Square.

“This can be very confusing, especially for foreign visitors who already get confused by your insistence on using archaic Imperial measurements for almost everything.”

The directive aims to officially define a stone’s throw as the average distance a stone can be thrown in Brussels with a prevailing north-easterly wind, when the weight of the stone is a known factor. This value is apparntly 26.3 meteres, although how legislators arrived at this figure is really anyone’s guess. A 7,335-word report compiled by oft-quoted Expert Scientists into why spitting distance is defined as “about three feet” is also available.

Rohan added that a number of other expressions were also under review, in particular the threat of knocking someone “into the middle of next week”, which may lead non-native speakers of English to believe that time travel had at last been cracked. Avoiding international confusion in the UK is no new minefield, as the last decade has seen Jif change to Cif and our beloved Opal Fruits to Starburst.

Councillors hit back at the policy. “What a load of old shit,” said Bob Farms, councillor for mystery Hardwick parish. “These are traditional common-use English expressions, and the EU has no right to interfere with our colloquialisms and odd sayings.”

Rohan responded that a “load” of “old” shit was specifically two metric tonnes of faeces which is three weeks and one day old. He added that anyone caught using outdated expressions after 1st December this year would face a fine of up to half a Rowley Million, and this would also apply to people who still call Somerfield “Gateway”.

Council leader Julia Wayward said, “It’s a load of absolute bollocks.” The legislation does not yet specify how many bollocks a load comprises.

Mr Sampson, speaking form his chair just outside cafe Nero, said “I’m fed up with newspapers makin’ out we’re all tiny minded, insular bigots with nothing but time on our hands to moan about speed bumps and crap Christmas lights.” He added, “so I thought I’d use my years of experience in writing letters complaining about stuff that doesn’t really matter to better effect. So I’m sitting here saying that there’s no such thing as small town mentality ‘cos i said so.”

Quick to grab any hare-brained anecdotal theory as a way of saving money the National Health Service (NHS) reportedly slashed funding to local GP’s and Health Trusts dealing with any sign of mental problem claiming Mr Sampson “was right.”

Kim Stonely-Bolton, spokesperson for the local NHS Trust, said, “Of course Mr Sampson is right because the Government told us he is.” He continued “there’s little left to add” and further stated “I have nothing further to state.”

Loads of local councillors were available for comment; we just couldn’t be bothered to print them.

Thousands of users got very upset when the site made using the new layout compulsory, when previously they could switch back to their preferred “old” layout.

The situation took a sinister turn in October when members began blaming the new Facebook, or TNFB, on all of life’s woes. Among the issues for which TNFB has been cited are the credit crunch; the technical error in the Large Hadron Collider which prevented us from knowing the answer to life, the universe and everything; annexing the Sudetendland; shooting Bambi’s mum and various rapes, murders and sex crimes.

Now, Westside residents have pointed the finger firmly at TNFB for the destruction of the historic Bell. Conveniently forgetting that the pub has been shut for some time, Great North Road resident Hayley Berry, 31, said “Where exactly am i supposed to drink now? i suppose it will have to be Brewsters with all them snot-nosed brats running around.”

Berry went on, “Clearly the new Facebook is to blame for the vanishing into a black hole of this once great watering hole.”

At the mention of black holes, the Citizen of course contacted CERN, whose Big Bang machine is reputed to be in a cave underneath St Neots. Spokesman Guillaume la Trec said that the Expert Scientists had looked into the problem and the LHC was certainly not to blame. “It is true a black ‘ole appeared and swallowed up zis public ‘ouse,” said la Trec, “but it was in fact just a large puddle of Guinness which ‘ad been disposed of over ze years in ze Bell.”

One internet commenter said, “First!”. Another said, “I don’t think TNFB knocked the pub down, but it is definitely planning to sell us greasy mechanically-recovered meat from the site, as well as providing a new destination for chavs and boy racers. I think it’s called Fried Chicken of kentucky or something.”

The New Facebook was unavailable for comment.