It's a knockout!

Salford City Council are introducing a new scheme to enhance the lives of its shopping precincts' visitors.

Each day, rounds of the popular 1970s & 80s challenge show "It's a knockout" will be played out in the shopping centres at Eccles, Swinton, Salford and Walkden. Games will include:

• Pastie payroll, where team members aim savoury pastries at electric scooter baskets and babies' pushchairs as they weave in and out of the pink dustbins and benches. The winner being the one to collect the highest number of pasties without scoffing the lot before the end of the challenge.
• Sausage roll slaughter involves layabouts stuffing as many piping-hot sausage rolls as possible into their mouths, the pockets of their trackie bottoms, under their baseball caps and in the hoods of their hooded tops. In this challenge, the victor is the person who sustains the fewest third degree burns. Again, competitors are not allowed to eat any of these delicious savoury pastry products.
• Prescription panic is the toughest test of all and it would be impossible without the cooperation of trickster pharmacy chain, Boots. People collecting their repeat prescriptions are strapped to a heart and BP monitor, they then have to negotiate some strategically-positioned instore product stands to reach the pharmacy counter at the very back of the shop. When they get there, they're informed that their heart pills are out of stock and wont be available for a week due to over prescribing to asylum seekers in Bolton. Ten winning points go to the team with any surviving competitors.

Council spokeswoman, Peggy Babcock said, "We recognise that the vast majority of people who have no choice but to live IN Salford have pointless existences and we want to make their daily outing to collect their prescriptions and pasties an entertaining one. By asking people to form into teams of single mothers, electric scooter users and general layabouts, we hope that people will come together to support each other, at the same time introducing character building challenges to what would otherwise be a mundane and aimless wander round the shops. Moreover, the Town Hall is just over the road from Swinton Precinct and it'll give us all the opportunity to place bets on the locals while we have a laugh at them. Let's face it, our only other entertainment happens when Corrie or Peter Kay film here."

Local charities have condemned the proposals.