Councillor Olive Orange, who spoke exclusively in sound-bites and wore jackets the colour of traffic cones, had just announced on live radio that the 9% hike in council tax was—entirely—the fault of “austerity, Tory vampires, and probably Brexit.”

When asked by a local journalist whether her party’s twelve consecutive years in charge might have had something to do with it, she responded by accusing him of being “dangerously far right,” and suggested he was probably funded by hedge funds and fossil fuels. The journalist, a softly spoken vegan from the Guardian, looked understandably confused.

Olive’s rise in politics had been meteoric, largely due to her ability to say absolutely anything with the confidence of a foghorn in a library. Her supporters called her “refreshingly direct.” Her critics called her “a wasp in lipstick.”

Then came The Incident.

It happened on a Tuesday—Tuesdays being the traditional day for council meetings and, apparently, vengeance. Olive emerged from the Town Hall, clutching a handbag the size of a wheelie bin, when a cloaked figure leapt from behind a recycling bin and whomped her square in the face with a custard pie the size of a manhole cover.

Security were too busy arguing over whose turn it was to fetch the digestives to intervene.

The cloaked figure yelled, “Down with hypocrisy! Up with pastry!” before disappearing into the municipal shrubbery.

The CCTV footage went viral before Olive had even wiped her glasses. Within hours, there were #PieJustice memes, tribute remixes, and a limited-edition line of “I Pied the Council” tea towels.

Olive, livid and lemon-scented, went on the offensive. She called a press conference the next morning and declared the attack an act of “domestic pie-extremism.” She insisted that the culprit was “clearly radicalised by far-right baking channels” and hinted darkly at a nationwide underground tart network.

“We are dealing with organised patisserie populism,” she said, pointing accusingly at a tray of custard slices brought in by the press office intern.

The following day, determined not to let democracy be derailed by desserts, Olive arrived at the council offices in a reinforced Volvo and a helmet.

She stepped out of the car.

And was pied again.

This time, it was a lemon meringue. A perfect arc. Cinematic. The splat echoed off the municipal bins like a slapstick symphony.

A second masked figure, wearing what appeared to be a novelty apron with “Bake Me Up Before You Go-Go” on it, shouted, “Far right THIS, you tax-goblin!” and vanished into the bushes.

Olive, crusted in citrus and rage, declared a full lockdown of the Town Hall. Council staff were subjected to random scone searches. Jam was banned. Cream was treated with suspicion. One elderly tea lady was waterboarded with Earl Grey.

At the emergency council meeting, she proposed a new department: the Counter-Confectionery Unit, headed by her cousin Maurice, a former nightclub bouncer with a shellfish allergy and no known experience of government or pudding.

Meanwhile, public support for the pie-throwers reached record highs. TikTok was flooded with footage of people flinging flans at cardboard cut-outs of Olive. Patisserie sales tripled. A bakery in South Oxley released a limited edition “Olive’s Folly” tart with extra bitterness.

By the end of the month, Olive was doing daily interviews surrounded by plexi-glass and wearing goggles. Her polling numbers inexplicably climbed. She began accusing anyone who laughed at the incidents of being “alt-pastry extremists.”

When asked in Parliament whether she had any regrets, she responded: “Only that I didn’t ban desserts sooner.”

Her memoir, The Crust Must Be Punished, was released six months later.

It sold poorly. But the pie-thrower got a book deal and a BAFTA.