The world’s gone mad
The organisers of last month’s inaugural Horsham Reading Festival, which invited an array of literary talent to read aloud to enraptured book fiends, were inundated with some 5000 ticket requests on their website. Their delight turned to bemusement when only 200 people turned up. A small-scale telephone survey, conducted after the event, revealed that the vast majority of their online customers believed they had purchased tickets to Reading Festival.
A pot of jam has received an official warning from Suffolk County Council for public order offences. Residents of Stowmarket complained about loud music being played at night from a disused turkey slaughterhouse. After several late-night calls from noise control officers were ignored by the owner (because, it later transpired, he had emigrated to Bermuda), the police forced entry into the premises to serve a summons on the miscreant. It turned out to be a jar of Tiptree Raspberry Seedless which had fallen from a shelf onto a radio, switching it on. ‘Nobody is above the law,’ said a council spokesman. The jam was unavailable for comment.
The inhabitants of Palzem in Germany were last week talking with police about a package delivered to them by an alleged terrorist cell with links to Al-Qaeda. The parcel contained detailed bomb-making instructions, a carbon detonator, 300 cross-head screws, instructions for the development of pitchblende and a packed of ‘Easi-Stir’ chow mein noodles. A source said that the package had been intended for delivery to Palzem in Sirnak on the Turkey-Iraq border. ‘We couldn’t think who could do such things,’ the astonished postmaster of Palzem told reporters, ‘although we suspected the French.’ The mayor’s office of Palzem in Turkey issued a translated statement which read: ‘We despises these the alleges her Germans outcast the mental condition foolish.’ Which, it goes without saying, didn’t help matters.
Elderly Margaret May McKenney of Roanoke, Virginia, suffered a fatal heart attack when telephoning her daughter to say that she’d just won the $2 million state lottery. ‘She was getting all excited and I guess she just died of happiness,’ sighed Louisa McKenney. The visiting coroner found the successful ticket clutched in Mrs McKenney’s hand. It did not contain any of the evening’s winning numbers.
A man in Knocknalina, Ireland, claims he is being haunted by the ghost of the late Mary Whitehouse, self-proclaimed guardian of public morals. Giving his name variously as ‘Michael’ and ‘Mary Whitehouse’, the medium told the local newspaper that Mrs Whitehouse urges him to crusade for Christian morality in the media. ‘To be sure, she can be a bloody auld nuisance,’ said Michael, before adding sharply: ‘Now you cut that filthy talk out this minute, young man!
