Ah, come on… Don't tell us you actually bought into this ludicrous blather about volcanoes in Iceland and ash clouds keeping planes on the ground and whatnot… Isn't it time you woke up and smelled the Lyons tea? Seriously, we know an old-school conspiracy when we see one: it'll take more than a few dodgy FX shots of bubbling lava, combined with cobbled-together computer graphics to make us believe such a pile of far-fetched nonsense.

Just in case you hadn't already realised, the whole 'volcanic ash' thing is in actual fact a viral marketing campaign for Discover Ireland, who have colluded with the media (as you know, we're for sale – cheap) to force Irish people to take their holidays at home this year. It's the latest in an ongoing series of increasingly audacious porkies that the sly foxes at Discover Ireland are pedalling – in cooperation with their Euro cohorts – in the name of kick-starting our knackered tourist industry. Witness their current ubiquitous TV campaign, the one with the song by Heathers that features the bikini-clad blonde babe pegging it into the waters of Donegal, surfboard at the ready… Yeah, right. Anybody who's ever been to Donegal will be acutely aware that this is bollocks of the highest order; the last time somebody ran into the sea there wearing a bikini, they were (a) being chased by an angry mob and (b) died of exposure roughly 30 seconds later.

Rumours abound that the government is planning a new foot-and-mouth scare to curtail cross-border shopping once and for all. File under: you're not paranoid if everybody's out to get you, etc.