THE cancer which claimed Christopher Hitchens was either random or stupid, it has been confirmed.

Hitchens passed away yesterday, prompting those he slapped up and down the street for the past 30 years to ponder whether or not he finally understood why God had invented malignant cells.

But experts said that after looking at cancer through a microscope for most of their lives they would have reassured the celebrated polemicist that it was almost certainly a result of random genetic mutations, but that if it was designed it was done so by a grade-A cretin.

Oncologist Dr Helen Archer said: “It’s not very intelligent to design something and then give it cancer. It’s like putting petrol in a diesel car. It is dimwitted.

“So if I had met Mr Hitchens I would have said to him, ‘if there is a God, he’s a fucknut, so you were half right’.

“And then I would have ducked as a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label hurtled over my head and smashed against the wall behind me.

“And then I would have gone out and bought him another bottle. And then I would have hugged him.”

Hitchens’ religious opponents used his absence to continue their argument with him by ensuring that every single one of their statements made his point for him.

And George Galloway, the pro-Saddam cat impersonator who this

morning used Twitter to revel in Hitchens’ death, was once again forced

to wonder who will bother to clean and change him when he finally

becomes incontinent.

Meanwhile, friends and relatives of Hitchens have been urged to set up a foundation in his name devoted to the study of using your brain to squeeze the most out of the one and only life you will ever get, even if you have to wash it regularly in lukewarm Scotch.