Grainy video footage of some kind of hairy ape man lurking around Parliament Square has divided commentators, with many dismissing it as an obvious hoax, while others have claimed it as definitive proof of a ‘British Bigfoot’. The brief film, shot one evening last month, seems to show the creature emerging from behind the statue of Winston Churchill to grab at the breasts of a passing woman, before ambling off in the direction of Whitehall, pausing only to scratch its hairy balls. “This, surely, is conclusive evidence that this elusive creature has been forced into Britain’s cities in its search for female breasts to ogle and fondle,” says top British cryptozoologist Tom Fringe in an interview with The Shite, which has obtained exclusive rights to the footage. “Its veracity is beyond question – we’ve managed to find the young woman who is so nearly molested by the beast, although she just assumed that he was a drunken tramp.” This latter admission has been seized upon by sceptics as proof that the footage is either faked or simply a case of misidentification. “It’s obviously, as the woman believed, just a very hairy drunken down-and-out, or a man in a very bad ape suit,” declares Professor Jake Edger, Chair of Zoology at the East Acton Academy for Young Ladies. “There is Bigfoot, British or otherwise. Even if there was, why would be want to molest the women of a different species? I mean, the average human sex offender doesn’t go around touching up lady chimpanzees, now does he?”

In the midst of this debate, a third startling theory as to the nature of the ‘Westminster Wild Man’ has emerged: that the hairy beast is, in fact, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on the prowl for more women to impregnate. “Look, I know this sounds crazy, but I’m sure that I’m not the only one to have noticed that Boris Johnson is getting more bestial and ape-like in appearance with every passing day,” muses political scientist Dan Margin. “ You know what I mean – the increasingly hunched posture, the unintelligible grunting when he tries to speak, that ever thickening neck and protruding lower lip. Every time he appears on TV now, I expect him to be dragging his knuckles on the ground. Or eating bananas. I strongly suspect that his ‘mating ritual’, by which he attracts unfortunate women to impregnate, involves him beating his chest and bellowing. I know I’m not imagining these things. They are actually happening!” But what could be behind the Prime Minister’s bestial transformation? Could it be that he is the victim of some African curse of the type one finds in fifties B-movies, whereby some witch doctor has put a spell on him – possibly as revenge for those cuts in the aid budget? Or is it a Covid side-effect? Should we expect to see more people who have contracted the virus going hairy and savage?

Indeed, some anti-vaxxers have seized upon Margin’s claims to allege that Johnson is the victim of some sort of genetic throwback in reaction to the vaccine. “Personally, I think that it is all down to some sort of diabolic pact that Johnson has entered into, in order to keep his libido ever potent,” opines the academic. “You know the sort of thing – he stays virile while he has a painting in the attic that gets ever more depraved looking and ravaged.” Except, according to Margin, it isn’t a painting, but an ape that he has in that hypothetical attic. “I’ve spoken to someone who was once doing some work in Number Ten – one day, having decided to have a poke around, he found himself in the attic above the living quarters. He swears blind that, before security caught up with him and ushered him back downstairs, he saw a cage up there – a cage containing some kind of ape!” he says. “Even more incredibly, he claims that the ape spoke! In perfect English! Not only that, but it appeared to be reading a book – he thought that it was the works of Virgil – in the original Latin!”

Margin theorises that as Johnson gets ever more hairy and bestial, yet incredibly virile, impregnating women left right and centre, that ape is getting ever more refined and human, but under-sexed. “Judging by the current state of Johnson, I’d say that increasingly intellectual ape isn’t just working his way through the classics in their original Greek and Latin and writing a dissertation on the works of Baudelaire, while drinking tea with his little finger cocked,” he speculates. “After all, I’ve been told that Johnson is now so hairy that Downing Street staff are having to shave his entire body twice a day in order to maintain some semblance of humanity. That’s when they can get him down from the chandeliers.” In an even more extraordinary development, fellow academic Hugh Outlier has postulated that the ape might actually be former Johnson adviser Dominic Cummings. “His origins are, after all, obscure,” says the Senior Lecturer in Psycho-Sexual Politics at Hatfield Reform School for Delinquent Girls. “Perhaps he started as a hairy captive ape that became so human as he swapped his animal libido for Johnson’s human faculties, that he had to be given the job of actually providing Johnson with some sort of intellectual credibility. Maybe his split from Johnson is down to the latter wanting to stop the deal and take back his human faculties?”

But, in reality, is Boris actually aware of his rapidly diminishing mental capacity? “Then again, does he even care, as he reportedly now has a dong the size of King Kong’s?” asks Margin. “The real question, of course, is just how long Downing Street can keep up the pretence that the Prime Minister is still a human being? According to my information, insiders believe that it is only a matter of time before he goes berserk at a press conference, grabs the BBC’s Laura Keunsberg and climbs up the tower of Big Ben with her clutched in his hairy hand. What will they do then? Call out the RAF which, thanks to Tory defence cuts now consists of two Spitfires and a Hurricane, to shoot him off of the tower?” Downing Street has so far refused to comment on any speculation linking the Prime Minister to the so called ‘Westminster Wild Man’.