Crazy! You Couldn’t Make It Up. Series 1 Episode 7

Last week has seen a bumper crop of weird news stories. Everything from an actors embarrassing moment, to prisoners making an imaginative escape.

Actor Channing Tatum was rushed to hospital during filming of his latest movie, The Eagle of the Ninth, with a rather embarrassing complaint. Many scenes called for him to wade through ice-cold water, and to protect him from the freezing temperatures a mixture of boiling and cold water was poured into his wet suit. It would seem someone in the film crew forgot to mix the boiling water with some cold to cool it down a bit and poor old Channing ended up getting his manhood severely scolded. Thankfully, after treatment he was, in his own words, “…..back on top, ….back in the game.” He could probably use the same advice I gave to a friend while he was deciding whether to get married or not; ‘Test the waters Old Boy, test the waters!!!”

Administrative bungling by governmental departments are nothing new as we all know, but a case this last week must rank among the top ten. Terence and Marilyn Walker, a retired couple who live in Cheadle Hulme Manchester, both sent their passports away for renewal. When they got them back, Marilyn Walker found the Passport Office had put her husbands photo in her passport! Much has been done to make British passports difficult to forge and various security checks are incorporated, such as holograms, laser dots and complicated watermarks, but it would seem the powers that be did not take into consideration one vital component – human error!!!

Argentinean Prison Officials have a great amount of egg on their faces after it was revealed that two prisoners, Maximiliano Pereyra and Arial Diaz, managed to escape from a top security prison near La Almeda dressed as sheep. It would seem they stole complete skins from a local ranch and after putting them on, along with a realistic looking sheep’s head, mingled with the sheep. Police officials have been quoted as saying that to identify the pair among a herd of a thousand sheep was impossible. Local people had seen the pair running through the fields at night and reported it. An obvious solution to the problem does come to mind. Release a few rams into the flock and grab the two ‘sheep’ that stand up and try to run!!!

An Australian publishing firm made a costly mistake when they printed a cookbook with a ‘minor’ typing error. The book, The Pasta Bible’, contained a recipe for tagliatelli with prawns and proscuitto which called for the adding of ‘salt and freshly ground black people’. It should have read ‘salt and freshly ground pepper’ but the mistake was discovered in time and 7,000 books had to be destroyed and a re-print ordered. That’s what happens when you trust a computer to proof-read something!!!

We all make mistakes, but it becomes extremely annoying when someone else’s error costs you a small fortune. Such is the case with a UK housewife and her electricity company. A Miss Drummond of Brampton in Cambridgeshire recently received an electricity bill for £10,196.59 because the company had been reading her meter wrongly, saying that is what she owed them. Miss Drummond said she had always been careful to check the usage and pay her bills on time, but this floored her. It would seem the company had only been reading four digits on her meter for the previous four years, but when they recently started to read five digits the error came to light. More fool them I say. It’s their mistake they should carry the loss. It wouldn’t be the first time someone got their digits in a mess, ask Channing Tatum!!!

What do you call a butcher without a sharp knife? Answer: A waste of space! But that does not seem to apply to the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. A man went into the Penylan store in Cardiff and asked the butcher to remove the bone from a joint of lamb, only to be told that he couldn’t since his boss had told him he could not use a knife because he might cut himself! More Health and Safety madness! The butcher had been cutting meat for thirty years and had taught many of the young butchers how to cut meat but now he could not use a knife. The man went to the information desk and was told it was company policy for the butcher’s own safety. A spokesman for Sainsbury’s said all their butchers got special training on how not to cut themselves but the one in question had not received all the training. So what has he been doing for the last thirty years, slicing meat with his teeth???

An American university professor has gone on record advocating that UFO studies become a university legitimate subject. A lecturer at Niagra County Community College, Professor Phillip Hasely said that there are sufficient unknown and unexplained phenomena to warrant such a step. You can imagine the interview for some high flying job can’t you. Interviewer: “So you went to university did you?” Applicant: “Yes Sir” Interviewer: “What was your degree for young man?” Applicant: Unexplained Flying Objects Sir” Interviewer: “Thank you……NEXT!” Does anyone really believe we have been visited by aliens? I can just imagine the conversation when the explorer got back to the mother ship. “Find anything?” “Nah! Just some sub-culture with illusions of grandeur. Lets go!”

Until next time.

Roy.