The director of digital from US satirical website Baratunde Thurston (@baratunde) introduced himself as a comedian and did not fail to live up to his billing, running through a bunch of headlines from The Onion over the years.

The Onion went online in 1996 and now gets more than 7 million unique viewers per month, 15 percent from mobile users. The site has 2.6 million Twitter followers and 1.5 million Facebook fans, and has started using these for live event coverage. Interestingly it doesn’t now follow anybody back: “That’s why they’re called readers … most people have nothing interesting to say,” Thurston said. “What the Onion does is not necessarily comment on the news of the day – what it does is create an alternative universe.”