SPLIFF, CALIFORNIA

COMEDIAN AND CHAT SHOW HOST BILL MAHER has been confirmed as Satan’s son.

The star was outed during one of his humorous monologues towards the end of his HBO show several weeks ago.

“Well, the jokes were a little lame, I felt,” said Liverworth Bicep (not his real name) of Austin, Texas, who was in the audience, “and I went ‘Oh God!’ because I thought, this material is not up to Bill’s usual standard, though I am not a regular viewer of his show.”

Bicep, who describes himself as a muscular Christian, said that “suddenly I found myself in a kind of sonic shadow, a terrific silence around me. Bill was still doing his thing, I could tell that, because a bunch of the audience was not laughing. Then I hear what I can only describe as this deep solemn voice inside my head. And it ain’t Bill. ‘Nothing to do with me, son,’ it said. ‘But you’re right, he’s a little off tonight’. I couldn’t quite place it, but it sounded a lot like Kevin Costner in Yellowstone. Then there was silence again and, as suddenly as he had stopped, Bill was back talking to me. And a bunch of the audience was still not laughing.

“Look, I have to call it as saw it: I had heard the voice of God, I am sure of it. And what happened next, it damn well confirmed it. Because before I could say anything, the silence returned and another voice was in my ear. This one was like Arnold Schwarzenegger but with a slight impediment, a lisp if you like. At first it seemed to pause, like it was having second thoughts, but then it said: ‘O hell, listen, I don’t normally do this, but I feel I now have to take ownership of Bill. I didn’t really want to but after what’s been said, I have to. You see, he’s my son, and normally I am well pleased with him. Though tonight, I agree, his routine is a bit flat. Hey, you can’t be on top your game always’.

” ‘I can,’ came the first voice.

” ‘Well, listen to Mr Perfect,’ the second voice replied.

” ‘You had your chance,’ the first voice said.

” ‘I told you I prefer to rule in hell than serve in heaven. Live with it,’ the second voice said.

“Then the voices were both gone. And Bill finished his show. I just sat there, I don’t know how long. I was pretty much last out. I stood on the street for an hour, wondering what had happened. Was that the Devil telling me Bill Maher was his son?”

Mr Bicep said he did some small research and found that the name Maher, while recently Irish, is actually found in ancient Satanic, the language of pre-historic devil worshipers. “The accurate translation is That’s My Boy! but Son of Satan will do,” Mr Bicep explained.

“I was still not fully convinced,” he continued. “I might have been hallucinating. Perhaps Bill had been smoking something before the show and it had drifted around the studio. I prayed and prayed. If the Devil had spoken to me, then so had God, I was sure of that. And that gave me solace. Anyways, I talked to my pastor and he provided me with a short exorcism and a serious amount of medication and told me not to work so hard. It might have ended like that if I hadn’t attended a National Rifle Association barbeque in Waco.

“There I am, standing next to boys from the West Texas Sons of the Confederacy, and they are demonstrating the most effective way to use a Barrett Fifty Calibre rifle in a confined space against a determined mass shooter, when silence descends again – man, I thought it was the noise of the discharge – and the lisp is back in my ear: ‘Look, I don’t want my fathering of Bill Maher to adversely affect his career or anything like that. I want to explain a few things. You know, it’s not like the old days, there’s no Rosemary’s Baby stuff or jackals in graves, or endless homicides. I don’t work like that now. It’s all done very scientifically, in the spirit of the age. No overshadowing, no visitations, none of that. So I don’t want you thinking ill of Bill’s parents. They knew nothing. Hell, Bill knew nothing. There was a nun in his childhood whose job it was to steer him in the right direction. But otherwise I let him find his own way. Not so difficult in today’s world. Too easy as they say in Australia. So are we cool?’

“What could I do but nod my head and drop my rare steak. A dog ate the meat. I went to ask a question but found myself staring into the telescopic sight of the rifle … at a target picture of the Devil. I did not pull the trigger. The Devil had spoken and I had listened. Make of it what you can.”

Mr Bicep has asked that his true identity not be revealed.

Conservative Christian groups across the United States say they are praying for Mr Maher, and his scriptwriters.