THE FOURTH ESTATE:

Nine News Queensland state political editor Tim Arvier remains in hospital suffering from acute shock after a newsroom prank by colleagues on Friday night went terrible wrong.

Some of Arvier’s workmates had created a very authentic looking but fake memo from the station’s news director directing that “all reporting and video of rampant youth crime throughout Queensland will cease on the election of the David Crisafulli LNP government on 26 October”.

The memo added that “this sensible ban, based on the clear assumption that the new LNP government would soon have youth crime well and truly under control, would apply for the incoming LNP’s honeymoon period, which will be defined as their first four years in office in hopefully what will be the first of a number of terms in government”.

A newsroom colleague of Arvier told The Bug on condition of anonymity that no-one had expected the highly respected political scribe’s reaction when shown the memo.

“It was only meant to be a bit of harmless fun and we would never have done it if we’d known what Tim’s reaction would be.

“He threw his hands in the air and shouted: ‘How can Josh [Bavis] and I be expected to fill our politics share of an hour-long bulletin without running loads of youth crime stories and running historic footage of their crimes with them yelling ‘police search warrant’ over and over again’.

“He looked at us and said: ‘At least we’ll be able to run Voice for Victims marches all the time’ and we pointed out that the bottom of the memo would ban them too after 26 October.

“He then let out an almighty scream, his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed unconscious to the floor beside his desk.

“He’s been in the Don Seccombe Private Hospital at the base of Mount Coot-Tha ever since and only occasionally slips in and out of consciousness.

“We’ve been by his side at his moments of lucidity and we’ve tried to cheer him up by pointing out how many stories he’ll be able to write over the next four years about the thousands of kids doing adult time for adult crime.

“That seems to cheer him up for just a little while but then he relapses again.

“We really are worried about his health and general state of mind.”

Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

Follow The Bug Online on WordPress.com