Republican Candidate Sarah Palin claims that she is more than ready to take on the job of Vice President after successfully naming three different nation states during cross-examination on her grasp of foreign affairs. With the governor of Alaska coming under increased scrutiny over the past few weeks, a number of political commentators had raised concerns over the suitability of the surprise choice to become the second most powerful person in the world. They pointed to the fact that until very recently she had never been out of North America and only acquired a passport last year.

The issue came to a head in a tense press conference yesterday when a journalist put her right on the spot and asked to name as many countries as she could. But the Republican nominee was proud to have passed the test with flying colours, later modestly confessing to being ‘pretty surprised I could remember so many.’

Mrs Palin got off to a great start with ‘America’ and soon followed this up with ‘Canada’ to a smattering of applause from the press pack. After a delay of several minutes and some conferring with her advisors she completed her hat-trick with ‘Disneyland’ and the assembled journalists stood and applauded her in-depth knowledge of global affairs. ‘That’s soooo impressive’ said one of the reporters who were clearly so overjoyed by her achievements that many of them were openly laughing. She later withdrew a statement saying that ‘she had got all of them’ and amended this to ‘all the important ones anyway.’

Other possible countries that were overheard during her whispered discussion with her staff were ‘‘The North Pole?’, ‘Narnia?’, ‘Latin’, and ‘China’ which was later discounted as being ‘just another word for crockery’.’ John McCain later congratulated his his deputy on her achievements but was asked why she left out Iran. ‘Because there is no such country as Iran’ he explained ‘At least there won’t be by the end of my first term.’