Having declared that Britain’s children have been subjected to sexual abuse on ‘an industrial scale’, Prime Minister David Cameron has unveiled his new weapon in the war against the perpetrators of such abuse: the so called ‘Peado Finder General’. “It’s quite obvious that traditional investigative methods have failed to protect Britain’s children from these gangs of abusers and child molesters,” Cameron told a press conference at Ten Downing Street, called to announce the appointment of his new Child Protection Tsar, already dubbed the ‘Peado Finder General’ by the media. “With these evil perverts operating nationwide, crossing police and social services jurisdictions alike, it’s clear that a one-stop shop solution was required to combat them.” The new child protection chief has sweeping powers and will handle serious cases personally, according to the Prime Minister. “No longer will children have to rely upon faceless apparatchiks to defend them – our man will intervene personally,” he declared, adding that the new appointee would also be far more proactive than either the police or existing child protection services. “He won’t just be sitting around waiting for child sex crimes to be reported – he’ll be actively seeking out the perpetrators before they have a chance to do further damage!”

According to newspaper reports, even before Cameron’s official announcement, the ‘Peado Finder General’ was already at work, hunting down offenders. “I thought it was some kind of home invasion robbery and that we’d all end up bound, gagged and buggered – but it turned out to be far worse,” Justin Cricklock told the Daily Norks, as he described how the front door of his Banbury home was unexpectedly kicked in one morning last week. “this bloody nutter in a puritan hat just smashed the door an and came striding into the house! Then he pointed at my grandfather, who was sat in his armchair watching Jeremy Kyle, and shouted ‘He is a peado!’ The poor old bugger nearly had a heart attack, as it was, he only wet himself with fear – but that was probably worse as we just couldn’t get the stains off of the upholstery and had to burn the armchair.” Cricklock’s eighty six year old grandfather Reg, a retired Punch and Judy puppeteer who had appeared several times on BBC children’s programme Blue Peter during the late 1960s and early 1970s, was then forcibly dragged from his chair and taken away by the intruder and his henchmen. “They had this cage on the back of a horse-drawn cart parked outside the house and they loaded him into that, before mounting their own horses and riding away, the wagon following,” Cricklock told the newspaper. “We didn’t know where they’d taken him – we hoped it was to a home. We’d been trying to get the old git to go into care for years.”

Cricklock and his family were eventually told by local police that his grandfather was being investigated in connection with historical allegations of sexual impropriety with a minor. “Apparently some woman was claiming that, back in 1969 when she was eleven, he’d used his Mr Punch puppet to do something indecent with his sausages in front of her which had scarred her for life. Although she only remembered it last month,” he recalled. “They told us that this ‘Peado Finder General’ character was using ‘special investigative techniques’ to get to the bottom of these allegations.” Three days later Cricklock’s grandfather was dumped back on their doorstep in a sack, dazed and traumatised. “He was gibbering on about having been subjected to the ‘ducking stool’ and the rack, but that he hadn’t cracked,” Cricklock told the Daily Norks. “Apparently that must have been enough to convince the bastards that he was innocent. I shudder to think what they might have done if he’d confessed under duress – burned him at the stake in the town centre, perhaps? Which would have been awful, as I’m pretty sure that the insurance policy we have on him wouldn’t cover death by retributive immolation.”

The Daily Norks has claimed that Cricklock’s grandfather’s experience at the hands of the ‘Peado Finder General’ has left other TV personalities of his generation living in fear. “Just about anybody who appeared on children’s TV in the seventies is now terrified of getting that knock on the door in the night,” said Deputy Editor Sam McClack. “Of course, it might not be a knock on the door – they could get called out in public whilst opening a new supermarket say. Worse, they could be on a live TV chat show when the ‘Peado Finder General’ walks onto the set, points at them and shouts ‘He is a peado!’ in front of millions of TV viewers!” Whilst the tabloids have been generally enthusiastic about the ‘Peado Finder General’ initiative, with many claiming that it represented a long overdue tough crackdown on sex offenders, other sections of the media have been more sceptical, with many questioning the credentials of the ‘General’ himself. “Exactly what qualifications does he have for the job? Is he legally qualified? Does he have experience in law enforcement or social work?” asked Sunday Bystander columnist Patrick Klagg, who has dismissed the ‘Peado Finder General’ as a typical Cameron publicity stunt masquerading as policy. “More to the point, who is he? We were expecting some kind of high profile appointment, but instead we get this mystery man. For all we know, he could be some severely traumatised and maladjusted war veteran, working out his own traumas by terrorising alleged sex offenders!”

Klagg is also dismissive of the approach to stamping out child sex offending so far employed by the ‘Peado Finder General’. “It’s hardly in depth investigation, is it, going around accusing clapped out minor celebrities who were on TV in the seventies.” he noted in his latest column. “Everyone on the web does that, for God’s sake. We already know which ones actually were peadophiles and sex offenders – they’re running out of people to accuse. Who’s next? Maybe the ‘Peado Finder General’ will resort to accusing dead celebrities – perhaps he’ll dig up Tony Hart’s body and put it on trial next!” For its part, the government has sought to allay fears of public burnings of suspects, with a spokesperson pointing out that only heretics are burned at the stake in England. “Public hangings are a far more likely outcome,” the spokesperson told the Daily Norks. “Obviously, the suspects might expire during interrogation, but that would at least mean that they were innocent, which could only be good news for their families as it would lift the stain of peadophilia from their loved ones.”