Returning to the office today, Scoop's Resident Satirist today reported that his summer holiday had been "absolutely ruined" by the thought of mankind continuing to engage in the vices of folly, blindness and arrogance without him criticising this behaviour in literature.

"There I was sitting on the beach, trying to get to grips with Pope's Dunciad, and all the time I was thinking, what if someone falls prey to the forces of irrationality and I'm not there to chide them?" said the Satirist, who cites his skill in deriding foolishness as one reason he has been Time's person of the year for two years running.

"It was all very distressing. In the end I took the advice of Voltaire (and Tolstoy for that matter) and found solace in work. So I went and I dug myself a great big hole. And then I climbed into it, and after that I kept digging. I call it my George W Bush impression."

The Satirist says that he has often felt the burden of his "vocation", its cultural importance and its massive power to change the world.

"For example, there's satire's inherent power to challenge the status quo," said the Satirist, whose favourite target is the opposition of the day.

"I mean, there are other people out there trying, in their way, to use the power of the word to combat overweening arrogance and so on but they're not, well, me, are they?"

"Take those Liberatarians. They're all very hot under the collar about the Government impinging on people's rights. But then, honestly. You may as well satirise the sun for rising in the East."

"Anyway, I must get back to work. My satirist sense is tingling."

When asked to explain this nagging feeling that someone, somewhere was doing something stupid, the Satirist said that it was "just a hunch".

Initial figures indicate no increase in the average rate of human frailty over the Christmas period.