Beatty Broadband, director of the St Neots Rumour Mill and Chinese Whisper Distribution Depot, today said that the company often releases rumours surrounding the future of the empty-since-completion warehouse, next to B&Q, in the hope that one of them will become true.

“Lots of things end up happening because we start a ridiculous rumour about them,” said Broadband, “such as KFC, Iceland and M&S opening in the town.” Indeed, such retailers previously seemed unlikely to open a branch in St Neots until the company got everyone discussing it.

SNRMCWDD, who are yet to make up a name which can be turned into a faintly amusing acronym, are also thought to be behind the massively pointless cinema campaign of recent years, despite denials from Broadband, who says the firm does not deal in lost causes. “We chuck that one through occasionally,” said a company insider who did not want to be named, “just for the lols really. It’ll never happen, but it’s real fun watching people get worked up about it.”

The latest rumour involves the use of the warehouse as the world’s largest greetings card retailer, of which St Neots currently suffers a deficiency. “There’s only about six card shops in the town right now,” said director of Card Universe Simon Sheen, “which is clearly not enough. Especially once we get the unbirthday recognised, which as anyone who enjoys novels written by kiddie-fiddlers will know is a successful card-giving occasion in Wonderland.”

It is thought that the company will occupy the entire warehouse, earlier moves to split it in two having been thwarted by overzealous Health & Safety officers. “Theoretically,” said HSE spokesman Don Kwon, “if you put a wall in somebody might walk into it, and that’d never do”.

English Heritage were aghast at the idea. The group says the warehouse is clearly going to be empty forever, so is working on having it listed immediately to save them the aggro in the future.

Spokesman Beatty Broadband said “We’ve got to the middle of March and there isn’t one really good bit of shit to circulate around the town. I mean really! We’ve had to spread stories about how surprisingly chilly winter is just to stay afloat!”

The CWDD has a long history of keeping the town in gossip, rumours and careless talk – in fact many of the town’s facilities have been attributed to the work of the company. “They got us a KFC by telling everyone there was gonna be one,” said Wheatsheaf Road resident Ann Dré, “and look at all the fuss they created over the cinema!”

Indeed, over the last twenty years the company has gone from strength to strength – the only rumour it has not started itself is that it operates from the huge empty warehouse next to B&Q. “Although that is pretty useful,” chuckled Broadband. “Why do you think we keep telling people Asda is going to move in there? Lol.”

Some of the amenities cemented by the CWDD’s work include Subway, the ‘artwork installation’ by the roundabout at the Riverside Park, a bigger car park at the train station, and the Brampton Pie Company, which is soon to open a town centre outlet.

“Of course, some of our work is not so appreciated,” said another company insider. “We’ll hold our hands up to Eynesbury, for a start, and to most of the cycle lanes, including the ones on the bridge. But if we don’t find something to work on for 2010 we might have to close – and then you’ll never get a fucking cinema.”

We gained access to a secret testing facility near Abbotsley, thought to be in Cllr Bob Farms’ mythical Eynesbury Hardwick parish, and managed to take a photo or two.

It is thought that the contraption, which is essentially an enormous household dustbin, will be used by the Council to process unrecyclable waste – including that which they cannot be bothered to recycle – to avoid sending it to a traditional landfill and thereby receive increased Government and EU subsidies.

“Brilliant ruse,” mused former town council leader Derek Miles of Eaton Ford. “Instead of sending everything to a big pile of garbage it’ll be stored in these three-storey bins, in a warehouse, and it’ll just look like it is ‘awaiting processing’. Genius!”

The height of the bin seems to be roughly that of the upper level of the new Cromwell Road tip, currently under construction. This would allow residents to empty all manner of crap from the back of their car directly into the receptacle, where it is thought that the rufuse will be compacted by “some geezer jumping on it”.

It is understood that when each bin is filled, it will be sealed and left out the back of Tesco, where local chavs will hopefully set fire to it, allowing for incinceration without all the associated paperwork. “I think it’s a bit daft to be honest,” said Weston Court resident Nora Thampton, 32. “If the council want to burn rubbish without a license why don’t they just say that someone dropped a fag-end in the new tip or something?”

Rumours also surfaced that HDC plans to construct a wheeled version of the monstrous trash can, and provide one to every household – making fortnightly bin collections a thing of the past. An unnamed contact at Pathfinder House said “usually when people talk about abolishing bi-weekly collections, they think we’ll go back to picking up their unwanted waste every seven days. With these new bins, every seven months is a more realistic timescale.”

The council had no official comment.

The report, which the Council have been awaiting for a year now, was expected to conclude the H&SE’s investigation into why a lighting rig came down in the run-up to Christmas 2007, and therefore allow the Council to return to the tradition of massive tacky lighting displays for the festive season.

The accident happened when the gantry, which was attached to the top of the Norwich & Peterborough building society, broke loose from it’s brackets pulling chunks of building down with it. But the report, rumoured to have cost almost one Rowley Million, seems to be merely a discussion of crackpot theories.

“It is possible, of course, that this incident was caused by small elves,” says the 3,596 page document, “who are known to take offence to the term ‘Health & Safety’.” Apparently this upsets elves, who mishear it as “Elf & Safety”, which is usually prefixed by “fucking ridiculous” – and they assume everyone hates them.

Other reasons mooted by the Executive’s dossier include local Asbo teens climbing onto the lights to look down ladies’ tops, and stray cats using the display as a climbing frame.

More worrying is the fact that Council members and employees have been barred from revealing details of the accident, prompting speculation that one of them did it on purpose “for shits and giggles” – possibly Derek Miles during the period he was channelling the spirit of his own non-existent evil twin brother.

One local resident commented, “I could have done this report in less than a minute.” Urged to continue, he said, “Some twat attached a hefting great lump of metal and glass to a centuries-old building that, surprise sur-fucking-prise, wasn’t designed for such things. And then it fell down. Case closed.”

The official release of the document is expected sometime between now and March, 2014.

Beatty Broadband, of the Chinese Whispers Distribution Depot (now incorporating the St Neots Rumour Mill) limited, said that the company had been keeping a tab on all the gossip surrounding the failed retailer’s prime location on the Market Square. “My personal favourite was that the Adult Pit Stop, currently located in a former Happy Eater on the A1 near Sandy was interested,” said Broadband, “but they couldn’t find a plastic bead curtain big enough to go over the doors.”

Another popular rumour is that frozen food giants Iceland are interested in the unit, or that cheap tat emporium Wilkinsons may move in.

One local resident commented that “It should be made into a social club for children,” apparently forgetting that this has been tried – and failed – before. Another person we stopped in the street said that the store should become “a place for grumpy, bitter people to complain about St Neots” – but then added that it was probably too small to fit them all in.

However, says Broadband, by far the most innovative plan comes from startup company alltheshitinoneplace.com. Chief Executive Alan Marlborough, 20, said, “We’ve all got used to the concept of internet shopping, where you can buy anything and everything without getting up from your ergonomic wheelie office chair. alltheshitinoneplace.com uses a similar concept, but in the real world.”

Under Marlborough’s plan, all the less inspiring shops in a town – such as estate agents, card shops, hairdressers, chairty shops and estate agents are put together into one building. But unlike the arcades and malls of the twentieth century, there are no separate shops and each business “hotdesks” – they occupy whatever area is free when they turn up in the morning.

This means that if a business wants to expand, they merely have to arrive earlier and take up more space – literally pushing the competition out.

“Of course, the unique selling point is that when customers come in they are greeted and given an ergonomic wheelie office chair,” said Marlborough, “and they just push themselves around the shop with their feet.” Former Woolworths checkout staff said it sounded like “tremendous fun”.

Both the town and district councils welcomed Marlborough’s proposal. “I was skeptical at first,” said planning department spokesman H.B. Pencil, “as no new empty shops have opened for a while and clearly a unit the size of Woolworths would be a real boost to that sector of the economy.

“I quickly realised, however, that alltheshitinoneplace.com’s idea would bean a lot of other smaller empty units throughout the town, that we could keep empty by charging stupidly high rates on. Brilliant!”

Business Link worker Fred Case said, “People will like this because it’s name ends in .com, and people still think that’s cool, at least at the back of their mind.” Marlborough commented that “When people get bored of that, we’ll just tag 2.0 or ‘cloud’ on the end and it’ll be like a whole new thing to get excited about. This really is a concept the like of which St Neots has never seen the like of which.”

Woolworths were unavailable for comment, except to say that no, the pick’n'mix counter had not yet been sold.

Thanks to the contributors of st-neots.co.uk

However, a study by the Chinese Whispers Distribution Depot has revealed that 62% of these are completely fictional, and the rest are lavishly embellished.

CWDD spokesman Beatty Broadband said, “As you know if there’s a rumour in St Neots that we didn’t start, we investigate it fully to decide whether it’s worth continuing. Hearing all these stories about fog got us thinking about how many were utter rhubarb.”

Broadband was shocked to find out that, amongst other things, Peter Bellingham, 41, of Parkway, had never accidentally driven into the river; Mavis Reerendum, 86, of Cambridge Gardens, had never parked in the centre of the road ten feet short of her garage “thinking she was home”; and HGV driver Simon Paul, 50, had never driven “all the way from Cambridge to Harrow at 85mph, unable to see more than three foot ahead.”

In fact, says Broadband, the only fog stories which did turn out to be true involved people getting pulled over by the police the next evening after accidentally leaving their fog lights switched on. “It’s quite disappointing really. I thought we had some really interesting misty mishaps in St Neots, but it turns out we live amongst over twenty thousands pathological liars.”

Dale E. Goszyp, of the St Neots Chinese Whispers Distribution Depot, said, “We’ve been perpetuating this rumour for years, and decided it was time to start it up again. Previous evidence has shown that if we repeat a rumour or theory for long enough, it will eventually come true.”

Ask any resident and you can often pick up the same gossip from many unconnected sources. Long-running rumours in the town, along with the KFC arrival, include Asda moving into the empty warehouse at Alpha Park and the High Street being pedestrianised – both of which are based entirely in fiction.

However, says Goszyp, not all rumours circulated by his secretive company are unfounded. “We told St Neots about Subway years before it opened, and Domino’s Pizza. We also correctly predicted the Handyman shutting down and are usually accurate with our predictions of opticians and estate agents moving into new-build empty shops.”

Eynesbury Riviera residents weren’t so sure. “Didn’t they tell us we’d be constantly flooded out?” asked Flawn Way homeowner Joyce Bergernstein. “I’ve certainly never woken up to find my cat floating down the garden path.” When the Citizen pointed out the river water swirling around her ankles she stated, “That’s just a water feature. I got the idea from Charlie Dimmock. Now where did I put my scuba gear? I need to go into my garage…”

Goszyp said that rumours and Chinese Whispers were at an all time high at the moment. Town Council leader Derek Miles said that, “It does look like KFC have put a planning application in for the Bell, which will mean the loss of yet another pub but a great opportunity to stuff your veins with cholestoral from reformed spicy chicken.” Paul Marcel was quick to point out that “Miles doesn;t have a clue. No pubs have closed down in St Neots for at least five minutes, and the Bell’s been shut for years.”

Wyboston residents were also said to be happy about the proposals. Frankie Gadsdizzle, 23, who lives in the village said, “USA Chicken’s a fuck of a long walk when you’re stoned and need some grease.” Reports that a cinema would be built next door were found to be completely untrue.