Catholic priests get a bad press among the licensed trades, mostly due to one Father Jack Hackett. So when a group of newly-ordained priests descended on a pub in Cardiff, it was only natural that the barman at the City Arms should have them out on their collective ear. In fact, he thought they were…

We don’t know what made Darius Monty go to the papers about his deep and abiding love for his 2004 Jaguar X-Type, because the human mind works in mysterious ways. But mechanophilia is a real thing and that doesn’t make him a manky old spunker, so give a guy a break. All the same, I do…

Hands up who remembers UKIP. *tumbleweed* But who remembers that time a local UKIP councillor got kicked out of the party for blaming the Thames bursting its banks in his home town of Henley-on-Thames on David Cameron supporting equal marriage? Yeah, the man who invented Gay Weather. Henley Herald (January 2014): Councillor blames Henley floods on…

RIP BROMES U R IN HEVEN NOW WIV DA ANGLES N PRICNESS DI N HER ANGLE CLEANER Two years ago today, villains – name and motive unknown – snapped a broom in two in the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. Eyam is a village still recovering from the Great Plague, which struck locally just 350…

Imagine living in a place called Dull. I bet it’s really exciting, especially when you’re twinned with a place in America called Boring. But the Dull-Boring axis is about to get even more exciting, as Bland in New South Wales wants in on the party. Have at it, you guys. Dundee Courier: Dull and Bland hold…

In which simple-minded country folk mistake a large stick for a long-extinct dinosaur species. We won’t lie to you, it’s a stick. A very dinosaur-like stick from some angles, but a stick nonetheless. Daily Record: Memo to the people of Stirlingshire – this is a stick I know my classics (Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park II, Jurassic…

News reaches us from New Zealand of a new low in You Had One Job-ism – where even the most simple tasks are screwed up in a way that only humanity can manage. It’s not difficult: You clear the dead animals from the middle of the road instead of painting over them. Stuff.nz: That’s a dead…

This one’s from a few years ago and arrives without a picture, so it behooves us to illustrate it for you. So, where do we start on this night out with grim reaper-cussions? Morecambe Visitor: Man dressed as the Grim Reaper arrested after lads’ night out in the resort  That’s the bare bones of it (eh?…

There’s one guaranteed way of getting your point across in your local newspaper – write them a poem. And make sure it’s really bad. Good lord, I’ve done it, it doesn’t take some kind of Keats-like genius. Quite the opposite in fact. And to prove it, here’s one which could be described as a bit…

I went on holiday by mistake this week and ended up kicking my heels for a day in Market Harborough, a not unpleasant town in the English East Midlands. While withdrawing cash from the machine at the Lloyds Bank next to the church I noticed this plaque, several feet up on the wall. It is…