Amazing Tales from Planet Tabloid

News that is out of this world

This week Elvis is spotted in Sutton Coldfield, rabbits take up residence under car bonnets and yummy mummies are the new It Girls. But first...

Burning Issue of the Week:

Is the Falklands War really over?

No. On Planet Tabloid hostilities have continued unabated for 20 years. They have merely been transferred from the South Atlantic to the world's football pitches.

ARGIES NAIL BECKS raged the Daily Star, reporting on how an Argentinian player with Spanish side Deportivo La Coruna's dramatically improved his homeland's World Cup chances by cutting down English football star David Beckham.

Beckham: It's war

NO REVENGE OVER ARGIES fumed The Sun, fingering guilty party Pedro Duscher as the man who has "ruined" England's World Cup chances with a single dodgy tackle.

"Duscher will not be in the Argie World Cup Squad," the paper reported. "But he has clearly done his countrymen a favour - England play Argentina eight weeks tomorrow".

Such was the state of emergency among the tabloids that by Friday The Sun had published a full-page picture of Becks' foot - and asked readers to dabble in a spot of faith healing.

BECK US PRAY it appealed. "You can boost his fitness by placing your hands on this picture of David's left peg.

"Even Bishops will be joining in" (see also pages four, five six and seven...).

ELVIS SIGHTINGS: LATEST

Elvis - who many people on Planet Tabloid believe to be still alive either figuratively or literally - has been spotted in the West Midlands town of Sutton Coldfield, according to The Times.

Garbage disaster in Sutton Coldfield

What happened was that a 20 ton dustbin lorry crashed into a house owned by local man Colin Campbell.

The house was completely wrecked, stranding the owner in an upstairs bedroom. But amid the debris a life-sized statue of Elvis was left standing.

Mr Campbell told reporters: "I bought the model about six years ago from a market. I had hidden him away in one of the bedrooms, hoping that no one would ever see it again. Now he seems to be standing at the front of the house. Elvis lives, again."

CUTE ANIMAL ACCIDENT OF THE WEEK

A rabbit nicknamed Dipstick has survived a 75-mile journey in a car engine.

Adrian Connell found the startled rabbit after driving from Portsmouth, Hampshire, to Poole, Dorset.

The rabbit had taken up residence under the car's bonnet in a way which is not really explained by the Daily Express which broke the news.

All the 57-year-old victim of the rabbit incident could tell the paper was: "The day before, three girls had knocked on my door and told me they had just seen a rabbit drop out of my car.

"The next thing, the cleaner came to say she had just seen a rabbit climbing down the wheel arch and then back up.

"We went to have a look in the engine, but it was not until the garage next door investigated that we found him.

"He wasn't even greasy."

And finally, the latest on whatever happens to be this week's new black, or grey or at least vaguely more sexy than our humdrum lives on PLANET LIFESTYLE.

This week it's the Independent setting the trend - encouraging the nation's women to become "Yummy Mummies".

Liz Hurley (pre trend-setting motherhood)

"Looks like getting dressed for the school run just got a whole lot tricker," it tells us, reporting that uber-chic celebrity mums such as Liz Hurley and Yasmin Le Bon are leaving the rest of women in a fashion dilemma - what colour goes with baby sick?

Although mere mortals can't afford to be too posh to push the pram, the paper's fashionistas sagely recommend that women take time to: "Choose the right heels [and] protect one's gorgeous coat from puke with a wodge of muslin.

"And on a good day ... we too can get into the spirit of postpartum sexiness."