Guru

If you are reading this on your fag break - obviously on an outside laptop or in the smoky confines of your own home - look away now.

Workers believe that smokers take more sick leave than anyone else - even fatties.

Having polished off an entire loaf of wholemeal toasted with butter and jam this morning, Guru was both indignant and indigestioned to hear Gordon Brown telling the nation not to waste food.

Does the prime minister's ability to talk unwarranted nonsense know no bounds? Guru hardly knows where to begin.

While prime minister Gordon Brown was in Japan telling Brits to cut food wastage, the Japanese government were cutting down on energy wastage - by telling office workers to wear less clothes.

The idea is that if workers wear less in the summer, their employers will be able to turn down the air conditioning - effectively neutralising the global warming effect of Brown flying 14 hours across the world to speak nonsense.

Guru was recovering in bed from a particularly non-lethal bout of man flu this morning when he accidentally sat on the remote control, lost a classic episode of Monty Python on UK Gold, switched over to the news and discovered that, in the last year alone, up to six million Brits have sued their employers for illnesses or injuries picked up at work.

Six million? Hang on a minute.

As a man who has long understood the value of a good backside, Guru was pleased to see bed manufacturer Silentnight ensure one of its employees' arses for £1 million.

Bosses at the firm's base in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, have reportedly signed up to premium premiums on bed tester Graham Butterfield's sensitive buttocks.

Raging at the amount of time teachers have off over the summer (enough not to need to strike and take months of sick leave during term, you'd have thought) Guru phoned the government to complain today.

However, Yours Truly almost passed out when he heard the government were off as well - until October! If ever you feel the need to pump up your blood pressure, disciples, take a look at MP's recess dates.

One of Guru's eagle-eyed disciples has spotted the remarkable similarity between canoe wife fraudster Anne Darwin and the CBI's director of HR policy Susan Anderson.

Separated at birth or something rather more sinister? Guru demands to be told...

One thing's for certain, you never see the two of them in the same room at the same time.

The chances of that happening are even more remote now as Darwin has been banged up for six years following her fraud conviction.

So unless Anderson spends some time at Her Majesty's Pleasure in the coming years (perhaps for throttling a whingeing HR director), a face-to-face encounter is off the agenda. 

Guru welcomes suggestions for any other HR look-a-likies with the best making it onto the back page of Personnel Today magazine.

Guru thought he had found the perfect job when he saw the job ad for someone to drink with Jack Hammond, 88, at £7 an hour. But within the first four words of a news story on the radio today, Yours Truly knew he had been wrong.

"The breast biomechanics team at the University of Portsmouth..." it started. Guru must confess he isn't sure how it ended, as he was off downloading the job application form.

Who should stumble past Guru in the tree-lined gardens outside Canary Wharf station this sunny morning than the blonde bombshell himself, mayor of London Boris Johnson.

Guru's first thought was "That's Boris Johnson'. His second thought was 'As he's speaking at an event I'm trying to find, perhaps I should turn around and follow him'."

With house prices tumbling, mortgage approvals drying to a trickle and interest rates soaring, you would think estate agents would be doing all they could to woo potential customers.

Not those at the particulalry oddly named Jackson-Stops & Staff in Suffolk, who used the word 'lesbians' as a reference number for the house they were selling on behalf of an, er, lesbian couple.