Amazing Tales from Planet Tabloid

This week, surprising tales from the riverbank, and high-jinks with elastic bands. But first...

Burning issue of the week

Q: Will Arsene Wenger's decision not to wear his lucky tie scupper Arsenal's chances?

A: Er... no.

With soccer in mind, the papers have spent the week trying to find news ways of combining those two great traditions - stories about football and stories about women with few clothes on.

How about the new bikini top made out of the two halves of a miniature football, held together in a net? Or the lavishly illustrated story about a new range of bikinis in official World Cup team colours? Or the old trusty favourite of naked women with Arsenal and Chelsea strips painted on them, probably with a pun about the word "strip"?

Ah yes, British innovation is alive and well.

Animal rebellion

The animal kingdom is lying low this week - perhaps aware that we have rumbled their bid to take over the world. (Incidentally, thank you to reader Terry Havens who points out: "We humans are a plug in evolution... birds will again be the dominant species when we Homo Sapiens are gone.")

But there is news in the Sun of Dessie, who aged 20, is making a claim to be the world's oldest duck (unverified, due to poor levels of birth certification among pondlife).

Fashion news from The Star

12 schoolchildren have been banned from wearing flares - on safety grounds

Twenty in duck years is about 100 in human years, and so it's perhaps not surprising that Dessie, like many older folk who do not go AWOL on six-week motoring holidays in France, has spent hours in the last few weeks watching snooker.

Her "owner", Ingrid, says: "She loves the colours and is glued to the box whenever the snooker comes on."

Meanwhile, Gandalf the Goldfish can only swim with little water wings made from cork held to his body by elastic bands.

Health news

Elsewhere postmen at a sorting office in Somerset have been ordered to stop breaking wind, the Sun reports. In a warning which may well have caused sniggers, they were told by their boss that in view of the latest "outburst", he was going to have use the "full force" of the disciplinary procedures. They were also told to stop flicking elastic bands at each other.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated incident, a man called Garfield Jenkins has revealed to the People that he eats 8lbs of Brussels sprouts a day. "If I can't sleep I'll get up to cook more," he says. "They lift my spirits as well as my sheets."

Time-saving

Owing to unforeseen circumstances, we were unable to think of a punchline for the story reported by the Sun that a lorry carrying crates of Holsten Pils shed its load on the A40. So please help us out and write your own punchline in the box below. Thank you.

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If any punchlines are good enough, we may publish some of them. We reserve the right to put up none, if none is funny.

Social misfit digest

They went on a ride. They screamed. Wow.

Yes, it's time to catch-up with all those crazy madcap things the celebrities are getting up to. Really, they do lead the most extraordinary lives. For instance, Gwyneth Paltrow had a friend round to her flat. Kylie wore a spangly ring. Posh and Becks are arranging a party. Neil and Christine Hamilton screamed when they went on a fairground ride.

Paul McCartney was the only person who did anything approaching normal, winning a load of goodies signed by himself when he rang a Beatles contest on an LA radio station. But we've all done that, haven't we?

Transvestite update:

RAF officer "Mike" is now "Michelle". But postman "Gary" is still Gary - he only wears dresses to "pull the birds". He told the Sunday People: "It works wonders with the women." He was once Miss Tenerife.

Planet Lifestyle

On Planet Lifestyle, the world ruled by advice from broadsheet lifestyle experts, there is a state of constant revolution.

So just as we are getting used to the news that crushed glass is the "in" thing to sprinkle on your garden, there are more recycling developments to take on board.

What about plastic bottles, for instance, which you normally have to hold with your bare hand before you can stamp on them?

Well, no longer. You can now get a holder to secure the bottle while you stamp. It's a snip at £27.50 and, as the Independent on Sunday points out, offers the twin benefits of "saving the planet and relieving stress". Perfect.

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Keep your eyes peeled for strange happenings on Planet Tabloid or Planet Lifestyle, and inform the authorities by submitting them with the form below.