Israel has announced that due to the need for new lebensraum to reduce overcowding in various North London suburbs it will soon begin its occupation of the South Bank.

The National Theatre will be converted into settler housing and the London Eye laid on its side to become a new 'pod-based' restaurant, ideal for serving Covid-friendly kosher meals.

The indigenous community of Thespians, who have occupied the South Bank for decades, will be given refugee status and relocated to Hackney Marshes and Stoke Newington. The new home of the National Theatre will be the newly built Hackney Empire on the Balls Pond Road, currently used for bingo, female mud wrestling, diversity training and recording re-runs of Round the Horne. 

A spokesperson for the Mayor of London commented:

Overcrowding in Golders Green and Stamford Hill has forced us to accept that occupying the South Bank is the only viable solution so we have reluctantly decided to allow the bulldozers to move in. Our sympathy lies with the Thespians whose ancestral community will be lost forever but the UN gave us the thumbs up so the international community is clearly behind us.

Sir Melvyn Bragg was unavailable for comment.