The Internet

The internet is made up of millions of brass pipes connecting huge underground reservoirs full of facts, ideas and nonsense. Information is pushed around the system using enormous steam-powered pumps.
Although it has been around less than a generation, the internet is now more than three times the size of Jesus. It continues to expand at the rate of two a year.

Here are most popular things people do on the internet (not counting looking at naked people):
1) finding recipes for teriyaki salmon
2) hiding
3) downloading morris dancers
4) origami
5) changing foreign currency
6) learning about bats
7) making smells
8) posting photographs of holidays in Suffolk
9) conducting séances

Dictators

Dictators are a subset of the marsupial family. Along with the characteristic pouch in which young are reared, common dictatorial features include ruthless ambition, nepotism, a willingness to use secret police and paranoia to oppress freedom of thought, and the passing of nutty edicts (for example the 1938 laws passed by Mussolini decreeing that all nuns must wear fairy wings, children must talk Italian with a Geordie accent, and gurning must be accepted as legal tender).

Some of the more popular dictators include Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Dionysius I of Syracuse, and Top Cat.

Ghosts

(Also known as wraiths, phantasms, spooks and spirits)
A ghost is what is left of a person after the soul has gone to the underworld, the body has turned to dust, and all the clothes have been given to a charity shop.

Ghosts have been around for several millennia. Several classical Greek plays contain references to ghosts, most famously in the comedy Heebie-Jeebies in Thebes by Aristophanes and the tragic Don't tell the Archon his Wife is See-through by Euripides.

In the medieval period it was thought that ghosts were caused by bad smells. They were generally regarded as pests, and most households would have their own scented priest to keep the ghosts away. Outside of the peak ghosting period, the priests were stored in priest-holes, which can still be seen in some ex-local authority flats today.

These days the public attitude towards ghosts is quite different, and ghosts perform many useful tasks such as slamming doors mysteriously, breaking unwanted crockery and making children talk with unearthly grown-up voices, which provides hours of family entertainment around Christmas time.

The Planets

The planets are named after the characters in a radio soap opera written by Gustav Holst during the First World War. Though known since ancient times, they have only recently been mapped by the Ordnance Survey to help walkers exercise their right to roam across the entire solar system.

In order of proximity to the nearest Starbucks, the planets are as follows:

Mercury - the current Mercury is actually a replacement, put into orbit in 1974 after the original was stolen. An awards ceremony takes place each year on the planet, when a panel of judges awards the Mercury Music Prize for the UK's best pop song about science.
Size: 17
Goals against: 8

Venus - Venus is named after a character created by the Roman business magnate and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus as part of a campaign to boost sales of clams. Venus became associated with love because clams were thought to be an aphrodisiac by Lucius Menius, a shopkeeper in Tarentum in the late 1st Century BC.
Loveliness: 86
Poisonousness: 99
Just like love

Earth - the earth is home to the only intelligent life in the entire universe, but unfortunately this has not been located yet.

Mars - contrary to popular myth, Mars is not made of chocolate; it is in fact made of soap. It has two moons, Deimos and Phobos, which translate from the ancient Greek as 'panic' and 'fear'. They are so named in acknowledgement of the reaction bathtime elicits in many young children.
Bellicosity: 80
Chocolatiness: 2

Jupiter - named after the King of the Gods in Roman mythology, Jupiter is both the largest and the smallest of the planets. No-one knows how it manages this. Jupiter has a large red spot which is in fact a bruise from a collision with Neptune. It should clear up in a couple of weeks.
Size: 110
Sense of smell: 25

Saturn - Saturn is famed for its rings, each of which is made from a different material, starting with papier mache, tin foil and toilet roll tubes in the inner rings, through plasticine, snot, flags and glass in the middle sections, to hair, gold, bread and tears in the outer rings. Saturn itself is just a big ball of rock, and has 'Greetings from Eastbourne' written across its core.
Distance from Birmingham: 157
Liking of opera: 74

Uranus - despite its name, Uranus is a planet. It has many moons, including Sun Myung Moon, Howard Moon and Blue Moon, and the Moomins, which are to be more precise asteroids. On Neptune it is illegal to play ball games or have barbecues.
Ruthlessness: 15
Miles per gallon: 46.3

Neptune - Neptune is one of the gas giants, along with Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, which is what gives it a slight eggy smell. Neptune is the largest producer of margarine and vegetable oil products in the solar system.
Rings: 7
Hats: 3

Pluto - although traditionally included in the list of 9 planets, Pluto has been scientifically re-evaluated in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries and found to be a rodent. It orbits the sun once a week, and twice at Christmas.
Pluckiness: 82
Shoe size: 9