A 1973 county survey showed that, after all deaths and births had been accounted for, there was a surplus of citizens, approximately 665 in total.

This was due to the practice of inserting deceased people's hearts into inanimate objects to bring them back to life. Grieving family members were most likely to attempt the process but there were also a few hobbyists and human traffickers.

Once the heart had been placed in its new host body, over which a medi-legal incantation had been recited, the object would become imbued with the personality of the deceased. However, there were often side effects, for example not being able to say certain words such as 'artichoke', 'help' and 'please kill me, I did not give my consent for this', to name but a few.

Hearts were usually placed inside humanoid objects: dolls, mannequins, large soft toys and the like, though one widow had her dead husband's heart inserted into a guinea pig called Jonathan who flushed himself down the toilet after his application to do an MA course in Linguistics was rejected.

See also: illegal ventriloquism, living toys, Mr Liver Head, organ tax, recycling surgical waste.

In 1978 the government faced budgetary problems on all fronts. The NHS, for example, risked collapse following an all-out doctors' strike, which had been triggered by the health secretary's insistence that doctors continue to work after they die and attend to patients via séance.

Desperate to reduce the numbers of patients straining NHS resources, the health secretary eventually struck upon an idea that would allow him to kill at least two birds with one stone.

British Gas was in the process of being privatised and the health secretary had a controlling financial interest in the company that was being groomed to acquire ownership. The health secretary lobbied for a short-term reduction in the cost of coal gas, particularly in areas of high unemployment, and promoted it as an aid to health akin to mountain or sea air.

He also had a hand in secretly funding a BBC "Play for Today" drama called "Noble Gas for Noble Gary" which extolled the virtues of a sick, working-class man who, along with several out-of-work comrades, commits suicide by putting his head in an unlit gas oven so as not to burden society. The men were portrayed as heroes to be emulated.

The health secretary's ideas became conflated in the public mind and by 1979 suicide by gas became an unlikely health fad spawning an array of books, cassettes and evening classes, all of which were produced by a company in which the healthy secretary also had shares.