A local election candidate has been forced to withdraw from the contest following a bizarre incident in a Brighton nightclub. Top British occultist ‘Bishop’ John Salford – notorious for his attempts to stake a vampirized Princess Diana (see Die, Lady Di) – was discovered in the gent’s toilets of the club, dressed in women’s clothing, grappling with a semi-naked man and apparently attempting to sexually assault him. “At first I just thought that a woman had strayed into the wrong toilet, either that or he was just a tranny,” says club patron Guy Manhole, who was using the facilities when the incident occurred. “But he started shouting something about Satan at this other bloke and began tearing his dress off! Before anyone could stop him, he’d leapt on the bloke threw him face down on the floor and began pulling his trousers off, this time shouting ‘Feel the hard wrath of God’! It was then that the bouncers rushed in and dragged the nutter in the dress away!” For his part, Salford – a senior cleric in the West Midlands Catholic Church and founder of the South Yorkshire Occult Society – blames the local press for wrecking his election campaign. “I was portrayed as some kind of depraved sex maniac by the local paper,” he complains, “when I made it quite clear both to the police and reporters that I was attempting to save that young man’s soul by conducting an exorcism upon him. Sadly, the Brighton and Hove Weekly Advertiser is highly influential amongst local voters!” Whilst conceding that his chosen method of exorcism – dowsing his penis in Holy water before attempting to take the possessed from behind – might appear somewhat unusual, Salford maintains that it is an accepted form of exorcism in most Christian churches. “I’m told that it is very widely used by Roman Catholic priests,” he claims. “As for the women’s clothing, it is well known that the sight of a woman strikes fear into the hearts of demons and disorientates them, making them easier to exorcise!” According to Salford, Brighton is in the grip of Devil worshippers, with both the local press and council under their control. “That’s why I came here – having removed the scourge of vampirism from Yorkshire, I’m now on a divine mission to rescue the people of Brighton from evil,” he announced at a press conference to launch his campaign for election to the local council. “The moral turpitude and pagan Godlessness this city is descending into can be traced directly back to Satan himself!”

Salford claims that he was approached by the girlfriend of the man he was attempting exorcise when she became worried about his behaviour. “Sandra sought my advice when her fiancé Darren became strange and distant, and began spending all his time with a group of new ‘friends’ he had recently met,” he explains. “She became distraught when he started to spurn her in favour of secretive all-night meetings at the flat of one this all-male band of acquaintances, returning home in the early hours of the morning, red-eyed, exhausted and barely able to walk!” Sandra became even more alarmed when Darren started to change his appearance, dressing entirely in black – black leather to be precise! “She told me that he’d also started sporting a neatly trimmed goatee beard and had started buying large quantities of male grooming products,” says Salford. “I’d seen this sort of thing before and knew there was only one explanation – deviltry was afoot!” A clandestine visit to the ‘friend’s’ flat confirmed the cleric’s worst suspicions. “Obviously, I couldn’t actually get into the flat, but by standing on a milk crate on the fire escape of the building opposite, I was able to get a good view through the living room window with my binoculars,” he says. “I was shocked by what I saw – not only was the room unnaturally neat and tidy, but above what appeared to an altar against one wall was a life-size picture of a naked, well oiled, man sporting a huge erection!” Salford was now convinced that Darren was about to be inducted into the Brotherhood of the Cloven Hoofter, a powerful Satanic cult. Knowing that the cult’s initiation ritual involved the initiate being buggered by a High Priest, Salford immediately instructed Sandra to examine her boyfriend’s underwear. “Sadly, the tell-tale signs of anal bleeding were there,” he sighs. “Luckily, they were in a pair of boxer shorts he had only worn three days before – there was still a chance I could heal the red mark of Satan and save his soul!” Although Salford was interrupted before he could complete his exorcism of Darren in the club toilets, a few days later he made another attempt to rescue the young man, this time by infiltrating a Satanist meeting at the ‘Windjammer’ public house with Sandra.

“We arrived in the midst of a devilish orgy being held in the lounge bar – a crowd of young male acolytes swaying hypnotically in time to flashing lights and unearthly music,” he says. “I quickly spotted Darren – he was in the arms of the Brotherhood’s leader, Dorian Love, about to be anointed by the looks of it!” Whilst Sandra repelled the gyrating acolytes by tearing open her dress and thrusting her breasts at them, Salford whipped open his trousers to reveal his penis – which he’d earlier had blessed by a priest – held erect by being taped to a huge crucifix. “Love seemed fascinated and repelled by it at the same time,” Salford recalls. “I took the opportunity to grab Darren and bundle him out of the back door and give him an exorcism in the back alley!” Salford’s account of his saving of Darren’s soul and his motivation for moving to Brighton have been called into question by his former associate, Don Faddle. “There’s an Asbo banning him from the whole of Yorkshire as a result of his last vampire hunting fiasco,” explains the former occultist, now employed as a leg waxer in a Chichester beauty salon. “He only came down to Sussex because his probation officer found him a job as a milkman – he thought there was no way he could get into trouble doing that!” However, Salford lost his milk round after complaints from a customer. “When this poor bloke opened his door one morning to pay for his week’s milk, John charged in, thrusting two pints of milk at him,” recalls Faddle. “John reckoned he was a vampire – the neighbours had told him the bloke slept all day and only came out at night – and reckoned that the silver tops on the milk bottles would destroy him! In a way they nearly did – the poor bugger keeled over with a mild heart attack! It turned out he was a shift worker!” Following his sacking, Salford set up in business for himself; as an ice cream vendor. “He used to tool around Brighton sea front in his gothic ice cream van – it was black and the chimes played the theme from the Hammer Dracula movies,” says Faddle. “That’s where he met this Sandra bird – she was only sixteen and happened to mention that she thought her boyfriend might swing both ways as she bought an Orange Fruity ice lolly! Next thing she knew, John was offering to ‘save’ him in exchange for a quick knee-trembler behind the freezer chest! I’ve got to hand it to John, he might be a nutter, but he certainly knows how to play this exorcist shtick to get his end away!”