10 things we didn't know this time last week

10 THINGS

10 strawberries - by Rob Green

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It's easy to lose track of the news. So at the end of the week, it's good to keep an eye on some of those things which shouldn't go unnoticed.

If you spot something you think should be included next week, send it to us using the form at the bottom of the page.

 

1. Celebrity tea drinker Tony Benn will not touch Earl Grey. "I don't believe in hereditary tea. I'm totally opposed to it." But beyond that he's not too bothered. "If it's hot and wet and sweet I don't care too much." He should know - over the past 60 years he's drunk, he estimates, 219,000 pints of tea.

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2. A word of warning for the summer - last year there were 7,133 accidents involving lawn mowers in the UK. BBC One's Death By Gardening this week reconstructed the scene where a butcher tried to clean his mower while it was still on. Even Charlie Dimmock drove a sit-on mower into a water feature. Meanwhile there were 593 accidents last year with cheese graters.

3. The British electricity company Powergen has recently bought a power company in Italy, at least according to an internet rumour which many people (including initially 10 Things...) fell for. A strange rumour perhaps, when ranked alongside celebrity tittle-tattle. But the explanation for the interest lies in the domain name for the fictional company - www.powergenitalia.com. The site is in fact nothing to do with Powergen but is instead an Italian battery firm.

Peter and George

4. Peter Snow, gadget king, auditioned to play James Bond in front of Cubby Broccoli in 1969, but he was too tall for the role. George Lazenby got the job.

5. Intrepid explorer David Hempleman-Adams will subsist on pork scratchings, hazelnut chocolate and homemade apple pie during his six-day trans-Atlantic balloon flight. "On my walk to the North Pole, I ate things like muesli with olive oil to get the calories in - I needed 12,000 a day. But ballooning is just sitting down all day, so I can nibble on stuff I love but never normally eat at home."

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6. The replacement for Intel's Pentium processor has the code-name Prescott. "Bet that'll pack a punch," wrote Michael Clarke to the Guardian letters page, getting in first with the jokes. "Will it not only check spelling and grammar, but help me make perfect sense?"

7. The average price of a CD in the UK is now less than £10, the first time this has happened. But is it just a sign of desperation by record shops? Andy's Records and Tower Records are just two victims, hit by supermarket price-cutting and downloading from that there internet thing. BBC Radio 2 is planning to investigate next week.

8. But at the other end of the musical spectrum, one of the longest pieces of music ever written has its world premiere at a London church this weekend. The Veil of the Temple by John Tavener lasts more than seven hours. Tavener himself has tips for the audience for dealing with the mammoth performance: "If they feel like lying down, having a sleep or walking outside wandering around the gardens of course they should."

9. Cannabis plants are being grown legally in Switzerland, but it's not an exercise in getting the mountain people higher than they already are. The marijuana is being farmed as flavouring for iced tea.

10. Rhyming slang phrase of the week: "complete Horlicks" - being how Jack Straw described the "dodgy dossier". Last week we reported how Google was trying to stop people talking about "googling" unless they specifically meant using the Google search engine, so concerned is it to protect their trademark. Could the Horlick's company be next?

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