DID YOU hear the one about Paddy Englishman who swallowed the joke made up by Paddy Irishman? It concerns a funny yarn which has been circulating on the internet for the past couple of weeks.

It reads like a news report of a meeting of Galway County Council, when tempers apparently flared during a dispute over cloud computing.

Headed “Clouds of confusion as Galway councillor tells another to ‘go f**k yourself’”, the article tells how one councillor took umbrage when he was called “a feckin eejit” for thinking cloud computing was most suited to areas with heavy rainfall.

The Daily Telegraphwebsite thought the story hilarious and promptly carried it. But it's a complete hoax.

Andy McSmith, in his column in The Independent,takes great pleasure in pointing out the hoax. "Councillor Seamus Tiernan is reported to have told Galway County Council's infrastructure committee that Connemara could be a centre of excellence for cloud computing because it has thick fog for nine months of the year. This supposedly provoked Councillor Martin Shiels to call him a "feckin eejit", whereupon the affronted Councillor Tiernan told him to "go f**k yourself".

This tale, reminiscent of the Irish jokes that were all the rage in the 1970s, had been passed around the internet for a week before washing ashore on the Telegraphwebsite.

“A quick check would have turned up a couple of flaws in the story: Galway does not have an infrastructure committee, nor any councillors named Tiernan or Shiels.” And McSmith concludes: “You’ve been had, boys.”