Chancellor Alistair Darling has said that the current financial crisis has not been caused by piss poor banking regulation and has instead chosen to blame a series of mythical creatures including a minotaur, the Loch Ness monster and pixies at the bottom of the garden.

Darling delivered the announcement while his balls were wedged tightly in a RBS branded vice. "It's easy for people to look at nonexistent things like 'banking regulation' and blame everything on that. But if we're going to do that why not blame other nonexistent things like Nessie, sober Irishmen and God?"

"I would like to go on record saying that it's all the fault of pixies. Malicious, tiny, money grabbing pixies. How can anyone hope to regulate creatures that are too small to see?"

Darling, who last week avoided being reshuffled into unemployment by super gluing his buttocks into his cabinet seat, has now been labeled as 'certifiably batshit insane' by a leading psychiatrist. "If he really believes weak banking regulation isn't even a little bit to blame for what's going on then he is a fucking loon. Professionally speaking."