Melvyn Bragg "is a southerner"

Beaker Radio was today accused of blasphemy for suggesting that Melvyn Bragg was born in Islington, and is a "big soft Londoner," in a documentary that totally overturn traditional arts journalism.

The new claims, based on a notebook that Burton Dasset found in the Doily Shed, suggest that Bragg's southern ancestry was "airbrushed out of history" in order for him to make the claim that he was a "man of the people".

"In this book," said Burton, "which I'm pretty sure is authentic even though it was written 70 years after the events it describes - and in Eileen's handwriting - we hear tantalizing glimpses of how Bragg used to say "grass" to rhyme with "farce". It describes how his boyhood favourite foods were pie, mash and liquor, whelks and jellied eels."

The documentary suggests that Bragg adopted a northern persona in order to avoid being confused with Brian Sewell. Traits that gave away his southern nature - his support for the Arsenal, sensitivity to cold, and use of a bath for washing instead of storing coal - were hidden away.

Followers of Melvyn Bragg, and people who get angry about everything, were incensed at the documentary. Lord Carey said, "It is disgraceful that at this time of year, when faded TV presenters try to resurrect their careers by getting back on the box spouting imaginatively-researched drivel, somebody has to broadcast this kind of thing. Did the South Bank Show die for nothing?"

Mervyn Bargs, of Liberal Establishment Voice, urged Bragg's followers to protest to the Beaker Broadcasting Corporation. "Is nothing sacred?" asked Bargs, "if this sort of thing continues, they'll start saying Stephen Fry isn't as clever as we all pretend, next."