Horror story –
aliens abduct
townsfolk
READERS of a reputable online news service based in Plymouth, in England, were startled to learn that aliens had landed in the town and abducted about 500 people into outer space.
It appeared on Plymouth Live, companion website to the daily print title Plymouth Herald.
What happened was that a reporter on his first day in the job had been "button bashing in a frenzy to make sense of the overwhelming, almost extra-terrestial, technology to which he had been introduced earlier that day."
Unfortunately, the text he had been supplied with on which to train was the spoof bit about the aliens. Somehow he got it out live on the internet.
Embarrassment all round. The editor says they might have to rethink their training procedures. The cub reporter says he guesses he owes the folk out there "a few pints".
Going live
YES, spoof stories have a nasty habit of going live. There was the case of "The Spidermen of Bamangwato". Peter Younghusband, in his day doyen of the foreign press corps in Africa, recalls it in his wonderful book, Every Meal A Banquet, Every Night A Honeymoon.
Peter, a hulking fellow known as Bigfoot after the giant grizzly bear of North American legend, was Africa correspondent of the London Daily Mail. His editor put out an instruction that all foreign correspondents should supply a feature story from their part of the world, to be held for future use as required.
Irritated, Younghusband obliged with a story from Botswana about the Spidermen of Bamangwato, a tribe who lived in the Okavango swamps and ate nothing but mosquitoes.
Generations on this diet had made them very light in weight and they could run on the lily pads of the swamps, hunting mosquitoes.
To his astonishment he got a telegram from his editor, thanking him for his wonderful piece. Oops!
Next he got a not so congratulatory telegram saying the Botswana high commissioner had been round, kicking up a dickens of a fuss claiming the Spidermen simply did not exist. Oops again!
Cables
WHERE did Younghusband get such a title for his book? It came from one of his foreign correspondent colleagues who had arrived from Fleet Street and took his time settling in before writing anything.
He got a sarcastic cable from his news editor. "Presume you alive and well and living in Africa."
His reply: "Every meal a banquet, every night a honeymoon."
More cables
Those cables. One Africa correspondent was being pestered by his Fleet Street office with ridiculous requests.
Eventually his exasperated response: "You people uninformed, unprofessional, unreasonable. Rude letter follows."
Yep, them wuz the days.
Tailpiece
RIDING the favourite at Greyville a jockey is well ahead of the field. Then suddenly he's hit on the head by a salmon sandwich and a pork pie. He manages to keep control of his mount, only to be struck again by a tin of caviar and a dozen Scotch eggs. With great skill he manages to steer the horse to the front of the field once more. Then in the final furlong he's struck on the head again by a bottle of Chardonnay, a crayfish cocktail and a melktert. Distracted, he manages only a second place.
Furious, he appeals to the stipendiary stewards. "I've been seriously hampered!"
Last word
Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water. - WC Fields
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