Top mad scientist chef Heston Blumenthal was forced to flee his restaurant – The Fat Duck – in the picturesque village of Bray last week, after it was stormed by a mob of angry villagers. “It was past midnight when they came marching down the street, waving toasting forks and spatulas,” says local resident Mary Crabwell, who witnessed the whole incident from behind her twitching curtains. “They stopped outside the restaurant and hurled flaming crème brulees through the front window! Then they smashed the front door down and rushed inside shouting ‘Kill the monster’!” As the restaurant blazed around them, the mob burst into the kitchens, smashing ovens, food mixers and any other food-related machinery they could find. Blumenthal himself was only able to escape after beating off two of the crazed mob with a swordfish, before climbing through a window in the staff toilets.  Whilst the press have speculated that the mob’s motivation was anger at Blumenthal’s growing dominance of the village – in addition to his restaurant, he also owns a gastro pub there and has recently bought the last remaining local pub – locals tell a different story, with talk of a ‘reign of terror’ and hints at dark goings on in the celebrity chef’s kitchens. “He created something evil in that kitchen, and I’m not just talking about his whale sperm salad dressing,” says Maurice Trobe, retired toadstool farmer and long-term village resident, who claims that the crazed culinary genius had been conducting bizarre food-related experiments in dead of night. “I’m telling you that he created a living thing in there entirely from foodstuffs – an edible man!”

Trobe’s claims are based on the testimony of nineteen year old Jimmy Arsochs, a former trainee chef at the restaurant. “I was there when Heston and his white-coated assistants pulled the creature out of a huge, specially constructed, oven and declared ‘It’s alive’, as the thing’s chocolate fingers twitched,” he says. “The idea was to create a five course monster – with every course being a body part! Heston’s plan was for it to want to be eaten – it would serve itself up to customers!” But things didn’t go according to plan. “Unfortunately, from the outset, the creature decided it didn’t want to be eaten,” recalls Arsochs, “and it quickly broke out of the secure larder they tried to hold it in until the restaurant opened.” Despite the creature’s subsequent depraved rampage, Arsochs is adamant that there was nothing irrational in Blumenthal’s plans to create life in his kitchen. “Heston’s already pushed cuisine to its very limits with his crazy cookery experiments – the creation of an utterly delicious living thing which is completely edible was simply the next logical step,” he says. “It’s the ultimate achievement for any chef! After all, most cooks just play around with dead stuff, trying to make it look fresh and appealing – but now Heston could claim to have created life, and then served it up to his customers!”

Not surprisingly, Arsochs’ allegations have been hotly contested by supporters of the eccentric TV chef. “It’s absolute nonsense,” protests the restaurant’s pastry chef Ricky Dibnoller. “It’s true that Heston had us prepare a life-size edible ‘man’ – but it was for a forthcoming cannibalism-themed episode of his TV series Heston’s Feasts. Obviously, there was no way Channel Four would let him serve up a real man for his guests to eat, so he had to bake one. I can assure you that there absolutely no attempts to animate it.” Whilst arguments might still rage as to whether or not Blumenthal actually created a monster that fateful night, nobody can deny that in the days that followed, the village of Bray suffered a series of bizarre disturbances. Eighty seven year old spinster Hettie Wibloss for instance, claimed that, as she walked back to her cottage one evening, she thought she could glimpse a dark, misshapen thing, from the corner of her eye, apparently following her. “Naturally, she started to speed up, but, as she approached her front door, she could hear it gaining on her,” relates her neighbour, Mary Crabwell. “Luckily, she managed to unlock the door and get into the safety of her house just in the nick of time – just as she was bolting the door behind her, she felt the intruder slam against it! It scrabbled wildly against it, trying to break in! She reckoned it even tried to get her through the letterbox – she says it thrust part of its body through it. Hettie reckoned it was green and looked like a cucumber!”

A subsequent police investigation found no trace of the attacker, although strange smears, later identified as a mixture of chocolate, milk and pastry, were found on the exterior of her front door. Traumatic though Hettie Wibloss’s experiences might have been, worse was to follow. “I’ve never seen anything like it – the victim had been smothered to death in what looked like whipped cream! Naturally, we assumed it was the work of some kind of sexual pervert,” says Detective Inspector Roland Kibbler, describing the scene which greeted him when he was called to a house in the village. “There had been reports of a disturbance earlier in the evening. When the local constable attended the property, he found the front door forced, and what can only be described as a scene of carnage inside.”

The whole house showed signs of a violent struggle, with furniture smashed and over turned, but it was the kitchen – where the victim was discovered – which seemed to be the epicentre of the incident. “Doors had been ripped off of cupboards, crockery smashed and the walls smeared with foodstuffs,” says Kibbler. “Most disturbingly, There was what appeared to be an arm baking in the oven – an arm made from pastry!” Even more bizarrely, chunks of pastry were found in the victim’s hands, and what appeared to be a half chewed pastry finger in their mouth. “The finger and pastry fragments on the body didn’t come from the arm in the oven, which was perfectly intact,” muses the detective. Jimmy Arsochs has no doubt as to what had happened at the house. “It’s obvious that the creature broke in and, in the course of a desperate struggle, the unfortunate householder tried to eat the thing to death, successfully devouring its arm,” he says. “It clearly tried to bake itself a new arm, but was disturbed before it could finish!” He also believes that the fatal cream was ejaculated by the monster. “That was one of its novelty features – it was to masturbate and then spurt cream out of its penis, all over dessert, which consisted of its profiterole testicles,” he speculates.

With the police busy looking for a food-obsessed, but human, sex murderer, the villagers, spurred on by Arsochs’ wild tales, decided to take matters into their own hands and destroy the restaurant. “They were just in the nick of time,” insists Arsochs. “In an attempt to placate his monster, Heston was on the verge of creating it a mate – I’d seen him feeling up a pair of blamanches as possible breasts.” Whilst the whole incident has been dismissed by the authorities as mass hysteria, one top food critic believes that Heston Blumenthal’s alleged activites do have precedent in the world of haute cuisine. “Let’s not forget that bloodsucking giant marrow Gordon Ramsey came up with – he had to stake it with a carrot in the end,” observes Charles Fondlebury of the Sunday Bystander. “Not to mention Marco-Pierre White’s were-cabbage that turned into a ravening turnip every full moon – that needed a silver paring knife to destroy it!” As for Blumenthal’s supposed monster, it’s fate remains unclear, although the rampaging mob did reportedly enjoy a five course meal whilst looting his restaurant…