The British Museum, the world's first 'Universal Museum', a living, breathing, pulsating 'encyclopaedia' of world culture containing numerous examples of every single thing ever made by humankind or created by the Lord God Jesus in his infinite wisdom, and presided over by Saint Neil of Great Briton in the sleepy little village of Bloomsbury, London, has announced its acquisition of the Pacific island archipelago of Melanesia, north east of Australia.

The museum has owned the entire material culture of Melanesia for over a hundred years since intrepid explorers and adventurers employed by the great European trading conglomerate Enlightenment Inc. first visited the islands back in the era of colonial adventure. By expanding its real estate portfolio in this way, experts believe the British Museum has effectively foreclosed any future claims by the Melanesians for the repatriation of their cultural property.

"Given that we already own Melanesia's entire cultural heritage dating back to God knows when, it made sense to buy the islands as well," said Dr Spandex Lyotard of the British Museum's Department of Small Islands in the Middle of Nowhere. "We've got our eye on Micronesia next, then maybe Magnesia, Polynesia, and after that, who knows, Amnesia, Analgesia, Nausea, Megalomania and Paranoia."

Following a moving ceremony in Bloomsbury on Friday, overseen by the British Museum's Mergers and Acquisitions department, Saint Neil MacGregor emerged blinking into the sunlight dressed only in a grass skirt while behind him a team of dancing curators delivered a rousing rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Bali Ha'i'.

Later, speaking in hushed tones, Saint Neil told reporters, "In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti, Elginium, Beninus et Rosetta Lapida infinitum in Bloomsbury est...".

At this point a heavenly light shone down and a battered transit van appeared, quickly disgorging a team of white-coated paramedics who bundled the ecstatic holy man into the back of the vehicle before heading off, sirens blaring, in the direction of the James Cuno Hospital for Neo-Colonial Neurological Diseases.

Marcel Mouse