Today I can exclusively reveal the new designs for Britain's coins.

The overhaul to our cash has been described by excitable, nerdy types as "the biggest change to our coinage since decimalisation."

It's the result of a competition launched by The Royal Mint in 2005 to find new reverse designs for seven coins, from the one pence piece to the £1 coin.

The new designs are set to be officially announced and introduced in the Spring of 2008 and will, according to the Royal Mint, "reflect a more contemporary, twenty-first century Britain."

Today for the first time anywhere in the UK I can reveal just what those designs will be.

The £1 coin, in keeping with its golden colour scheme, will feature the famous 'golden arches' of the nation's favourite restaurant - McDonald's, whose contributions to modern Britain are unparalleled.

Once famous for contributing only to our waistlines, the burger chain is now contributing to the nation's education too, by offering its employees educational qualifications in the form of a McDiploma.' Britannia, that old politically-incorrect symbol of Empire, conquest and subjugation featured on the 50p coin, is to be done away with completely.

It will be replaced instead with the iconic image that sums up modern Britain - a knife-wielding, hoodie-wearing yob, depicted gracefully holding two fingers aloft to the society from which he scrounges and steals.

The twenty pence piece will feature a symbol loved by all the inhabitants of twenty-first century Britain - the all-seeing Big Brother eye', offering hope of fleeting fame to wannabe footballer's wives everywhere.

The other four coins will each feature a symbol that best represents the regions that make up modern Britain.

The ten pence piece will be England's coin, and will feature a merry football fan urinating up a wall.

The five pence piece, representing Scotland, will carry an image of a deep-fried battered Mars bar on a lonely moor, while the two-pence piece will depict Northern Ireland's struggle for peace, in cartoon form.

The design for the new Welsh one-pence coin was chosen by the Assembly, and as such has been delayed by a year, and will cost several million pounds more than first thought.