History reeks of cake controversy

THE PRIME Minister, explained loyal Tory MP Conor Burns, was “ambushed with a cake” on his birthday last summer. It was therefore an unpremeditated birthday party at Number 10, the sort of thing that could happen to anyone.and who hasn’t been assailed by jellies, bombarded with Twiglets, caught unawares by Colin the Caterpillar on manoeuvres or buried in an avalanche of meringues?

We have learnt that there is a drinking culture at Number 10 which means that at the slightest provocation some lowly-paid junior will be dispatched to the supermarket with a wheelie-bag.

But now we know there is also a culture of cake that is spiralling out of control.

If we look back through history we find many examples where the great and the good – who thought they were impervious to an all-out cake attack – have had to… er… eat their words.

We asked Alfred the Great, former King of Wessex about his bad experience with cake. Is it true that while on the run from the Vikings he sought refuge in the home of a simple peasant woman?

She asked him to watch her cakes baking but he – distracted as he was by affairs of state – let them burn. “That old story,” said Alfred. “Can’t you journalists ever ask about anything else? During my reign we had a world-class programme of stuffing the Danes but nobody ever wants to talk about that. Oh no. All this nonsense about cake is a mere distraction from the really big issues facingwessex at the time.

“Look, let me be clear about this. I didn’t know how brown the cakes should be. I’m not Paul Hollywood you know.

“Anyway the simple peasant woman just told me to watch the cakes. She never said anything about taking them out of the oven. So yes, I was ambushed with cake. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone else who has suffered similar.”

Fast forward a good few centuries and we meet Marie Antoinette, Queen of France.

Does she regret saying “Let them eat cake,” when she was told the starving people of France had no bread?

“My words were taken out of context,” said her majesty. “Let me be absolutely clear about this.what I had in mind was a far-reaching cake booster programme of getting as much cake into everyone’s mouths as possible. Even though there is a lot of cake hesitancy and people had to be persuaded that cake was good for them.”

Finally we tracked down the Knave of Hearts, who stole the tarts that the Queen of Hearts had made. All on a summer’s day. “They were just sitting there,” said the Knave, “asking to be taken. In a very real sense I was ambushed by tarts. Let me be clear, no rules were broken. Unfortunately the King saw things differently and beat me ‘full sore’.”

Ambushed by cake. A clear and present danger in these troubled times.