Result!

Some say that if we vote to leave Europe, Britain’s workforce will be quietly wafted into a river of booze by naughty Teutonic ghosts and gorgeous Gallic temptresses. Vast swathes of builders and accountants will twiddle their fingers aimlessly outside pubs waiting for the baccy man while their Great British wives brazenly squirrel away jars and tinnies under babies’ blankets at Lidls across the land, just to stay afloat. If we vote out, house prices will tumble, the pound will be pummelled, Englishness will be outlawed and Germany will stop us playing in the Euros. Even rugby will be affected.

Detailed reports from other inscrutable economic experts tell a different story. According to these worldly folk, if we vote either way, we’ll be screwed to the floor and perish from exposure to polonium-spiked Evian and putrefied Spanish tomatoes left over from Pamplona. Swarmed by migrants, housing will grind to a halt, the NHS will crumble, our schools will implode and the smoking ban will be relaxed.

So what is the answer? Who can really tell us which way to go? With the two faces of Britain’s future presided over by two very strange gentlemen with the same agenda, it’s difficult to tell.

The King William pub in Lower Drizzle, Kent, just might be the answer.

When landlord (tenant) Steve Beluga-Titler coined his signature platter ‘The Brexit Burger’, families came from afar to taste his juicy touch. Sold from a window round the side by the flue, Titler, a local pilferer made good, reckons two thousand Brexits have been wolfed down by hungry punters in the past three months alone.

Having heard about the burger on the radio, I decided to call Mr Titler as the journalist I profess to be to see if I might be able to scrounge a burger and a pint. When I lied that I worked for The Sun, I heard a thud at the other end, after which Titler insisted on indulging my entire family at Sunday afternoon’s ‘All You Can Eat Brexit Burger Bonanza’.

I drove down in the Maestro, taking Des, Ben and Jezebel from the local.

Once there, Titler gave us all a Brexit burger with frontier wedges and dreadlock holiday coleslaw. We scoffed it down so I placed my old Nokia on the table and told him I’d be recording the interview.

‘We all agree that the burger’s amazing, don’t we, er, family members?’ I said to my mates. They replied yeah.

Wanting to get to the bottom of Europe with Titler, I asked him the big question. ‘So, where did you get the idea for the Brexit burger? Are you suggesting that this burger personifies good old blighty? Really, Mr Titler, it’s just a timely gimmick, isn’t it?’ I said, farting a burp through my teeth after a rather large swig of his local craft lager, ‘Hands Off’.

‘So,’ said Titler.

‘I don’t like it when people start with the word so,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ he said, clearing his throat.

‘That’s OK,’ I said.

‘So,’ he said.

‘You said it again,’ I said.

Des drilled some of his Hands Off through his nose and I had to control him.

‘Sorry,’ said Titler. ‘Anyway…’

‘That’s better,’ I said.

‘So,’ he said.

‘You said it again’. This time, Ben belched his craft bitter, ‘Leave It Out’, along with a sizeable portion of his meal over the table and into Titler’s lap.

Titler clicked his fingers and a very pretty young woman in a mansize Man Utd shirt ran over to swab the stuff from his hernia-bulging lap.

‘So,’ I said to Titler, ‘you were saying?’

‘Er, you just said so,’ he said, clearly upset.

‘So what?’ I replied, ‘I work for The Sun so I can say so whenever I so wish, so I can.’

Des, Ben and Jezebel couldn’t hold it in after that so we got turfed out by the burly barman, Jerzy. I did manage to get the recipe for the Brexit burger from the girl in the Man Utd shirt, who spoke perfect English, as she was taking out some empties and filling an off-duty customs officer’s Land Rover with red diesel.

‘It’s made from Limousin beef and Belgian veal with a bit of bacon fat, Emmental cheese and, wait for it, gherkins from Croatia. The only thing British about it’s the fake olive oil spray, but even that’s made in Poland,’ she muttered, eyes peeled to the pub window to see if Titler was watching.

‘So the Brexit burger’s a European dish,’ I said.

‘Bloody right,’ she gasped, ‘and get this…the guy that invented the recipe’s the pub cleaner, Boris from Albania. He lives in Titler’s shed.’

As she scurried off, my eyes were drawn to the dilapidated prefab shell sat haunched and buckled under a dead apple tree, weeds sprouting from the plastic windows, a piss-riddled poster of Lineker wincing for Gazza at Italia ‘90 on the door. I thought about the unlikely prospect of England winning the Euros, voting to leave Europe and thousands of football fans being beaten with baguettes.

Bumbling back into the pub I needed a quiet word with old Titler. 

‘I’ve just conducted a conference call with colleagues at The Sun, who’ve somehow found out that your Brexits are made from European livestock,’ I whispered in his hairy ear.

Titler raised a beaming smile from a deathly stare. ‘How about three crates of Hands Off and two Leave It Outs to keep mum and we’ll say no more about it, hey?’

We settled on that and Jerzy loaded up the boot. Even got the girl in the Man Utd shirt’s number. Result!