Middlesbrough health officials triumphantly announced today that after 30 years the extremely damaging and virulent Take That virus has finally been eradicated from the town.
Leading health official, Lombardo Tuscanini, told assembled reporters, ‘At 8.32pm yesterday evening, we received a report from a young man living in the flats near the Dorman Club on Oxford Road, of a woman humming a tune that he said sounded very similar to one his mother used to sing when she was seriously ill with the virus, when he was a small child. A team of 170 police officers, firefighters, SAS commandos, council officials, and a team of dog handlers, with specially bred highland terrier killer dogs, rushed to the scene of the report. The young man’s suspicions were well founded. Inside the flat, we found 4 Take That CDs and over 20 digital downloads of their music on her iphone. The last song the woman had played was Pray, from when Williams was still in the band, but, what was absolutely sickening about the find, was that 2 of the CDs still had the sticker on the front ‘Warning. This CD contains explicitly shit music’. Several of our officers are currently receiving counselling.’
Tuscanini continued, ‘We immediately took the woman to the Middlesbrough Advanced Inoculation Centre in South Bank where she underwent 4 hours of intensive therapy which, as you all know by now, consists of listening to a whole range of different types of music that is not as shit as Take That. We are pleased to tell you that, at just after 1.15am this morning, the woman spoke the necessary words, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Compared to the music you’ve just played me for the last 4 hours, Take That stuff is absolutely wank’, which means the woman is now completely free of the virus.’
‘Her 2 children are thought to be clear of the virus as we think that she probably played that disgustingly vile noise while the children were at school, so at least we know she didn’t want her children to become as ill as she was. The children have described a ‘fancy man’ who used to pop round a few times a week, but they report that he only ever played death metal, and apparently he wore a Death to Take That T shirt, so we are assuming he is free of the virus.’ He finished the briefing, ‘We hope we will never see the likes of this virus again in the town but we will always be vigilant and, even now, we are hearing rumours about Westlife and Boyzone viruses beginning to spread again in certain parts of Stockport and Glasgow.’
At the peak of the virus in the 1990s and 2000s, you could walk down Parliament Road at any time of the day or night, and there would be both men and women of all ages singing things like ‘Relight my fire, your love is a plastic green wire’, ‘Watch your back, watch your back, yeah I’ll watch your back for good’, ‘I need a game of patience’, and ‘Yeah, you and me we can fight with a pie, if your dog doesn’t die, we can feed the birds’. It was estimated at the time that 98% of the population were suffering from the virus. The other 2% were deaf, fortunately for them. No-one really seemed to care and you would see pictures of Barlow and Williams, and the 3 others whose names no-one can ever remember, everywhere you went including launderettes, pizza shops and Iceland.
The virus spread easily in those dark days as people passing by would hear the singing in the street and immediately become infected and start to sing along, so virulent and catchy were the tunes. Young men who wanted to get frisky with a young lady would hear the music when arriving back at the young lady’s house or flat, and would become infected. Many thought it was a price worth paying though for the friskiness. Some women, who had cars by then, would play it really loud on their car stereos and infect any unsuspecting stranger who might be within hearing distance of the dreadful sound.
Anyway, that’s all in the past now and we can look forward to Take That virus free days safe in the knowledge that there is proper music out there with a good beat and semi-meaningful lyrics. Good luck everyone and stay safe.
If you have any stories about Take That and their hideous virus, then please, for God’s sake, don’t send them to FNOM@hottail.eu.uk. because we are meant to have completely wiped out this virus and that includes even talking about it.
Fantastic News of Middlesbrough 