An eminent Doctor has finally come clean about a 34 year old hoax perpetrated by herself and her so-called 'husband', back in the alleged '1970's'.

Sally Aldberger, now Baroness Aldberger came up with what seemed at the time to be an almost hilarious fictional ailment after getting 'a bit squiffy' at a cocktail party in Islington.

"My husband, Dennis, had recently read an article in a respected medical journal about a complaint called ' Ukulele Armpit'.  We both thought that it sounded like a wind-up, and decided to try and go one better, as we were young, drunk and had way too much time on our hands!"

The 'spoof' story that the really quite annoying young newlyweds hatched was a supposedly serious research project into the deleterious effects of bagpipe playing.

"It was v. v. funny!", snorted Aldberger with the pointless horsey snigger of the type only the most self-righteous and arrogantly wide-headed know-it-all can muster.

"We wrote a paper,", she brayed,

"..that claimed that the continued suctional (sic) airflow of the bagpipes could actually force the player's testicles to be actually drawn up into the actual body. Actually.  In the long term, we said, this could cause not only discomfort, but actually actual infertility."

Hmmm.

"The amazing thing is..", she unfortunately continued,

"..everyone believed us!"

So, why did they decide to own up to the frankly puerile deceit that was 'Bagpipe Testicles', a made-up falsehood of nearly amusing proportions after all these many years?

"Well, it was only after the story resurfaced at Christmas, prompting a Radio 4 charity appeal to help sufferers of 'Bagpipe Testicles', that we realised our almost funny prank may have gone a bit too far!"

We were informed that the mischievous couple recently wrote to the editors of The British Medical Journal with a formal retraction and apology for their spuriously wrong-headed false claim.

We approached the BMJ for a quotable response,

"Twats.", they said.