Were powerful global news organisations behind a recent spate of celebrity deaths? This is the astounding claim being made by the West Midlands’ top conspiracy theorist. “Look, you aren’t going to tell me that all those celebrity deaths clustered around Christmas were a coincidence,” thirty eight year old Simon Copsty told the Birmingham Evening Norks. “Not only that, but wasn’t it incredibly convenient that pop superstar George Michael died – with no warning or apparent reason – on Christmas Day? Just in time for the TV news to carry the story in their evening bulletins when, traditionally, they have nothing to report!” Indeed, the former van driver claims to have evidence that various news organisations conspired to assassinate the former ‘Wham’ singer in order to generate a major news story during the holiday season, when, normally, they have no real stories to fill out their TV bulletins or front pages. “It’s the same every year, the media spend the Christmas period trying to build up the usual roster of tragic accidents and murders you get around this time of year as their seasonal misery stories,” Copsty explained. “Because the media love to shove a good tragedy in our faces at that time of year, to make out sure they ruin your Christmas, but it is generally hard going for them. But every so often, chance hands them something so catastrophic, tragic or devastating that they don’t have to do anything to build it up or shove it in our faces – I mean, a few years ago they hit the jackpot with that tsunami which killed all those people – that was a real festive spirit dampener! But last Christmas they decided they weren’t going to leave it to chance, instead setting up several celebrities for a festive demise!”

According to Copsty, the media conspiracy targeted celebrities after seeing the massive ratings and circulation boosts TV news and print media experienced during earlier waves of celebrity deaths in 2016. “The trouble was that they had no way of predicting which celebrity would shuffle off this mortal coil, or when, so as to be able to fully exploit their passing,” he told his local newspaper. “So this consortium of major news providers, including BBC News, ITN, Sky News, CNN and all the major tabloid newspapers, got together and decided to draw up their own lists of celebrities whose deaths they believed could generate the most viewers and readers. They agreed that whenever they hit a ‘slow patch’ for news, they’d have someone from the list offed!” However, Copsty believes things went wrong over Christmas. “Wires clearly got crossed and too many targets were expended over too short a timescale,” he alleges. “First of all there was the premature doing in of Rick Parfitt from ‘Status Quo’ just before Christmas, when it would have minimum impact – people were still too busy wrapping presents. Luckily, nobody really noticed as Quo haven’t sold an album in at least ten years. They finally got it right on Christmas Day with George Michael, but then they dropped the ball and had both Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds eliminated within twenty four hours of each other – it was all too much for either the news media or the public to handle!” The lack of major celebrity deaths so far in 2017, Copsty believes, is the result of this overload: “They know not only that the public wouldn’t be able to handle any more of them, but that they were in danger of inducing compassion fatigue, thereby lessening the impct of future deaths and the potential ratings boost they might provide.”

Media sources contacted by The Sleaze have denied any involvement in any of the celebrity deaths which occurred over the Christmas period, describing Copsty’s claims as ‘utterly ludicrous’. “I won’t deny that George Michael’s death on Christmas Day was a Godsend,” one anonymous source from BBC News told us. “I mean, we were beginning to panic come the evening – we had nothing, literally nothing, to lead the evening news with. We had our full collection of amusing animal videos on stand-by to pad out the bulletin with, but then the news of George’s passing came down the wire – you wouldn’t believe the scenes of jubilation in the news room.” The source claimed that Copsty was well wide of the mark in accusing the media of having assassinated the singer. “The word in intelligence circles is that the Russians were behind it,” they confided. “Apparently it was done on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, who was afraid that George Michael was seducing him into homosexuality – he had to die in order to stop Putin’s gay thoughts.”

A source as Russia Today, who also wishes to remain anonymous, has denied such claims. “There is no doubt that the Russian government went to great lengths to deflect attention from the death of the notorious homosexual George Michael,” they conceded. “They arranged the crash of that military aircraft, with the loss of everyone on board, including that military band on Christmas Day, to keep George Michael out of the Russian news, but this was simply because they refuse to give publicity to degenerate Western deviants who seek to corrupt Russia’s youth with their innuendo filled songs.” The source went on to claim that in Moscow it was widely believed that George Michael had faked his own death for publicity purposes. “His supposed death will boost sales of his new, supposedly posthumous, album,” they speculated. “Then he will triumphantly rise from the ‘dead’ for a live tour.”

Copsty, meanwhile, is standing by his claims. Indeed, he is now claiming that the news media conspiracy had an even bigger celebrity target than George Michael in its sights as a possible Christmas story. “Remember that ‘cold’ Her Majesty The Queen had, which kept her away from the public all Christmas and New Year?” he asked readers of the Birmingham Evening Norks. “That was actually a biological weapon they deployed against her – if they hadn’t succeeded in getting George Michael, then they would have given her another dose to finish her off! Imagine those headlines!” A source at Sky News was rubbished these claims, telling us the Her Majesty was actually suffering from a form of bird flu. “She caught it when she had to deal with that outbreak of avian flu amongst a group of swans in the West Country,” the source explained. “As everyone knows, all swans in the UK are the property of the crown and it is an offence for anyone other than the Queen to kill them, so she had to go down there and throttle the lot of them with her bare hands. I can tell you, they put up quite a fight – we managed to get it all on film with a hidden camera after we were tipped off as to what was happening. We were going to run with it as our Christmas Day story, but the bastards in the government slapped a D-notice on us – which proved to be bloody bad luck for George Michael.”