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The UK: Odd people, odd place names

The Editor
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The UK: Odd people, odd place names
The UK: Odd people, odd place names
Odd place names in the UK

The UK is known for its eccentrics. Here is our pick of the oddest and rudest place names in the UK.

The entire place is full of people who like to wear cats on their heads in July,.eat seven Shredded Wheat for lunch, drive the wrong way down the M11 killing four innocent motorists in a head collision, or read the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac backwards three times before supper  –  all in the name of harmless, Great British fun. It’s buffoons like these who make it easy for us Brits to laugh at ourselves – just as everyone else does.

The odd Place names

Take, for example, the place names we have given some of our lesser-known towns:-

Wigwig, Shropshire

The birthplace of internationally admired, all-round entertainer, Bruce Forsyth. Bruce ‘Brucey’ Forsyth, purveyor of more catchphrases than popular TV show Catchphrase,.was honoured by his townsfolk in 1973 as a wedding gift to him and his new TV bride, Anthea Redfern, from whom he was divorced six years, and nine toupees later.

Droop, North Dorset

This picturesque hamlet is set amongst unspoiled views of the beautiful Dorset countryside. Its name derives from an 18th Century mayor of Droop who was well known to the local ladies of pleasure. Mayor Jeremiah Smith, who liked more than a large peg or two of dry gin,.often left his female company flummoxed as to what to do with his flaccid mayoral ‘sceptre’ presented to them at the end of a long night in the local tavern, hence the moniker ‘droop’, which gave the hamlet its unflattering, impotent name.

Loose Bottom, East Sussex

Loose Bottom, situated at the border of Lewes and Brighton, is a scenic valley frequented by walkers and people who like dogs, walking dogs, or acting like dogs… with other people… usually strangers to them… who share similar interests.

Great Snoring, Norfolk

You can work this one out for yourselves.

Suffolk Satanist who made 53 calls to 999 was drunk

The Editor
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Suffolk Satanist who made 53 calls to 999 was drunk
Suffolk Satanist who made 53 calls to 999 was drunk
Satanic Priest

A Satanic High Priest who dialled 999, fifty-three times in one evening was… wait for it… drunk.

Satanic Priest David Craghope, 34 of Rectory Road, Whepstead, West Suffolk repeatedly dialled for emergency services before hanging-up each time his call was answered. Police eventually traced the calls and attended Mr Craghope’s address where he was questioned over the calls.

Satanic Priest

Satanic Priest Craghope, who it turns out runs the local occultist sect. The Temple of the Goat, was discovered lying naked on his living room floor inside a pentacle. he had squirted out of a bottle of tomato ketchup. Amongst the amulets, charm stones, severed goat’s hoofs, scrunched cans of Tennent’s Extra,.and stale prawn crackers strewn around his squalid front room, the potty priest of paganism was found mumbling incantations in some strange, indecipherable dialect which later turned out to be East Anglian English.

Sorry, the antichrist isn’t here right now

When asked why he had made the nuisance 999 calls. Satanic Priest Craghope explained through hiccups that he was actually attempting to call Satan direct on 666 but had had his phone upside down.

Emergency services are often pestered with nuisance calls which are a drain on their time and resources.

Enter online now for a chance to win 3 months in prison!

Joanne Capgun from Bury St Edmunds, was handed a 3-month suspended sentence.last July after she admitted three counts of attempting to enter the Loose Women Dream Holiday competition prize draw 175 times by dialling 999 instead of 09068 78 60 60. Asked how she could make such an obvious mistake, she told the court that she had “got confused”.because she had been watching a lot of re-runs of ‘The Bill’ on UK Gold at the time.

72-year-old Vera Loggins, another emergency services pest caller from Metfield in Suffolk,.was given a verbal warning from officers after she recently called on the fire service to attend her gingerbread bungalow claiming that her bedroom carpet was on fire and that a rattlesnake had appeared from under her bed. Officers arriving on the scene discovered no fire, or snake, but rather that the old bird had overdosed on her Olanzapine anti-schizophrenia tablets mistaking them for her Barkleys mini peppermints.

Old-looking-man refused booze at Esso

The Editor
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Old-looking-man refused booze at Esso
Old-looking-man refused booze at Esso
Old-looking-man refused booze at Esso

A 58-year-old man, who looks much older was refused when he tried to buy alcohol at an Esso petrol station for not having an ID.

Being refused alcohol on the basis of not looking one’s age can be considered a compliment,.but not when you look like Brian Hamilton, from Dennington, Suffolk. There is simply no denying that gravel counter, Mr Hamilton, looks like he’s been twice dragged through a hedge backwards.

A spokesman for the garage said: ‘We have been in touch with Mr Hamilton to apologize.for the experience and inconvenience he encountered during his visit to our Esso station. The assistant who served him claims that it wasn’t Mr Hamilton’s age that caused him concern,.clearly looking like a bedraggled 19th British army infantryman returning home.from the Crimean War as he does, it was more to do with his apparent state of inebriation.”

You can have fags at ESSO

Selling alcohol to someone under 18 can lead to a maximum fine of £20,000,.and retailers reserve the right to refuse the sale of alcohol to an adult.if they’re accompanied by a minor and think the alcohol is being bought for the minor.

There are however, no restrictions on selling alcohol to shit-faced, elderly workers. Even if they do have pieces of cornish pasty embedded within their tobacco-stained,.Lord Kitchener moustaches – however the decision to sell is left to the discretion of the retailer.

We attempted to contact Mr Hamilton at his home to ask him if there was any truth in the allegation that it was not his age,.but rather his alcoholism that prevented him from being served lager at the Esso station. Another old-looking man with a moustache answered the door and told us that Mr Hamilton was unavailable for comment due to him being “Down the Texaco”.

Noise detecting traffic cameras backfire on local residents

The Editor
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Noise detecting traffic cameras backfire on local residents
Noise detecting traffic cameras

A new system of noise-detecting traffic cameras recently installed.near Great Yarmouth’s seafront to target anti-social drivers revving their car engines has backfired on local residents.

Marine Parade in Great Yarmouth is a hotspot for boy (and girl) racers.who soup up their silly little cars with illegal exhausts, tacky alloy rims,.and fluorescent lights to deliberately annoy local old folk – many of whom didn’t fight in the war for the likes of them.

The new scheme, installed at a cost of £300,000 to local council tax payers,.uses a few old VHS videocams found in a backroom at Great Yarmouth Borough Council. and a number of microphones left over from a conference.on the planning of overseas junkets for councillors held at the town hall last year. The system works by detecting noisy passing cars, triggering automatic number plate recognition,. and setting off a series of bright flashing lights and a loud siren to alert the sociopathic drivers to their wrongdoing.

Cheese off, cheese on

Andrew Gray, 78 from Camps Heath, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, is “cheesed-off” that cameras were not installed nearer to his gingerbread bungalow.

“They’re constantly out there racing their automotive vehicles all hours of the day and night. Especially at the weekend when I like to have my boyfriend over. It’s very distracting when a luminous green Ford Escort XR3I convertible speeds past your bedroom and shakes the windows. Last week I was so disturbed I accidentally smeared ASDA’s ‘Tingle All The Way’ Brie flavoured lube gel (£2.50).all over my boyfriend’s face,” he says. He is also worried that if nothing changes, the speeding will cause a “serious injury, rupture or even death at some point”.

Latest Traffic Cameras

Lowestoft resident Thomas Crinch, chair of the campaign group Residents AGainst Everything (RAGE) agrees.

He told the Gazette: “We’d like to eliminate the problem of speeding down here. These bloody microphone traffic cameras aren’t going to work. If I had my way I’d put them up against a wall and…” Yes. Thank you, Thomas!

Don’t stop me now, I’m having such a good time

One unexpected consequence of the new system is its use by passing drunks turning out from nearby pubs. The microphones and flashing lights on new traffic cameras are perfect for outdoor Karaoke, making the entire system somewhat counterproductive. An analysis of the footage collected by the Marine Parade cameras over the last month.revealed trollied locals delivering renditions of ‘Little Red Corvette’ by Prince,.‘I Drove All Night’ by Cyndi Lauper, ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman, and ‘Shut Up and Drive’ by Rihanna.

A review of the new traffic cameras is scheduled for the new year.

Teletubbies Po in a land of her own

The Editor
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Teletubbies Po in a land of her own
Teletubbies Po in a land of her own
The land of Po

Po from famous TV show ‘Teletubbies’ owns a country. Suffolk Gazette can reveal. Welcome to Poland. The land of Po from TV’s famous show.

There are celebrities who own supercars, and movie stars who own Mansions in Beverley Hills. There are even rock stars, like reggae band UB40 who own their own Caribbean island. But you have to make it big, really big to own your own country. 

The rise of Teletubbies Po

After Jesus, Napolean, and Muhammad, the next most recognizable international icons are the Teletubbies. Four weird but loveable, asexual teddy-toddler TV addicts who communicate with one another and the world through gibberish. A bit like the Beatles but without the scouse accents.

Dung Tele

Their TV show, which featured episodes on, among other things, the topics of: feeding chickens, balancing pots, dung beetles, and making sandwiches was a daily watch on TV’s across the world.

During the late 1990’s, the plush fab four won multiple BAFTA awards and their show was nominated for two Daytime Emmys. As their fame grew, they released a single based on the show’s atrociously addictive theme song which reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart. The song remained in the Top 75 for 32 weeks, selling over a million copies. Unbelievable.

Intolerable Tele

By the year 2000, the Teletubbies were worth over £1 billion. By then, their fame was unparalleled and everyday life had become intolerable for them. The paparazzi were permanently camped outside their home – the Tubbytronic Superdome – located in a grassy, floral landscape populated by rabbits and birds somewhere near London’s Notting Hill. Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po became prisoners of their own success.

That’s when Po, the youngest, shortest, and reddest Teletubby was confronted with a choice… either quit the band, go into rehab, or take over a foreign country. She (apparently a female) decided on the latter. So it was that, on a cold morning in December 2002, Po, without telling the other ‘Tubbies, jumped on her favourite toy blue and pink scooter, and using her soap bubble stick antenna to blow bubbles as she went, scooted off on a mentalist’s adventure to her new home in Poland.

Internment Camp Tele

Arriving at the border twelve days later, hungry, tired, and slightly scuffed, she mumbled some gibberish to the border guards in her soft, ineffective voice. Realizing that the stuffed refugee was the famous Po, the guards quickly took some selfies with her before confining her in an overcrowded internment camp.

Eventually, Po was released and rehoused in a specially-built replica Tubbytronic Superdome in Lublin. Reportedly, Po still lives there happily to this day, apart from one small problem… the Tele built into her tummy only plays Polish TV shows.

Council apologised after drawing ‘Two Lines around Pothole’

The Editor
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Council apologised after drawing ‘Two Lines around Pothole’
Council apologised after drawing 'Two Lines on the Dirt'
Council decorates pothole with 2 cute yellow lines

East Suffolk council issued a groveling & insincere apology to local residents after painting double yellow lines around a big pothole. we felt we had to report the story. Apologies.

Who has ever met a conscientious council workman? Perhaps you’re married to one? I doubt it! In my 15 years of reporting for the Suffolk Gazette, I’ve never met one. In my experience, council labourers are lazy buffoons who consider an honest day’s work to be one endless 8 -hour tea break, interspersed with laughable attempts to relay the Sun newspaper’s daily headline, as though they understand it. If it’s not tits and arses, it’s casual, excusable racism, motoring… or football.

Wouldn’t it be good if they could just get on with their work in a timely fashion so that the rest of us don’t have to be waylayed by their unending lackadaisical ineptitude?

Dream on

Take, for example, the dickweeds who were regrettably tasked with painting two straight yellow lines on some tarmac in a run-down neighborhood of Ipswich last Tuesday morning. After turning up six hours late, laden with excessive amounts of bacon sarnies and sausage and onion rolls, and then having a game of cards, and a thirty-minute piss break, the three moronic, beer-gutted slobs finally got their paintbrushes out. Faced with the mild obstacle of a small, 3-foot pothole – completely unresembling the moon craters experienced by the astronauts of Apollo 11 – the working class turds basically gave up. There was no discussion, no consideration, no plan. Just an extra sensory agreement that the problem would be ‘worked around’ rather than fixed. FFS.

This country & Potholes

Not long after the useless workmen departed the scene of the crime against refinishing, the inevitable complaints began to pour into the county council and the office of the Suffolk Gazette. Sadly, we’ve seen and heard it all before, and having accepted that shit council workers are just a normal part of British life, we were reluctant to cover the story.

Good god. When will this nightmare end? We already covered a story where Council filled plants into potholes.

The Welsh walk more quickly than the English

The Editor
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The Welsh walk more quickly than the English
The Welsh walk more quickly than the English
Fact: The Welsh walk more quickly than the English

A study by boffins at Cardiff University has debunked the long-held belief that the Welsh walk faster than the English.

For centuries, the assumption has been that, due to Wales, the country, being slightly behind the rest of the United Kingdom in most other things, the Welsh would also be slower walkers, but apparently not!

A sample of 150 English, Northern Irish & Scots tourists visiting were studied in various locations across Wales as they walked to shops, across zebra crossings, and up and down welcoming hillsides.

Glamorgan they bargained for

The results of the study came as a complete shock to the University’s social anthropologists who had expected the English to be the fastest walkers, followed by the Scots, then the Northern Irish, and lastly, the Welsh lagging quite a distance behind the rest. However, after slowly walking around the university green double-checking the data, the results were unambiguous. The Welsh are indeed the fastest walkers in the UK.

Welsh walk

The studies were conducted over a three-week period using the ‘catch me if you can’ method whereby a Welsh boffin carrying a clipboard and stopwatch follows an unsuspecting walker having started one-hundred yards behind. The pursuit lasts for five minutes whereafter a final measurement taken by a second boffin determines the distance, and thus the time differential between the follower and the followee, resulting in a definitive ‘walk speed’ comparable with the speeds of walkers of other nationalities. It all quite simple.

Llandudno why?

So what are the reasons for the Welsh walking at superior speeds to the English, Scots, and Northern Irish? We asked the Lead boffin, Dr Gwyneth Griffindor PhD to explain. “Felly, roedd yn hawdd dilyn y Irish because they were walking towards us. Llai hawdd dilyn yr Scots who were going to the pub. Llai hawdd fyth i ddilyn y English who walked quite stiffly but with purpose. O ran dilyn the Welsh, we just couldn’t keep up at all, didn’t we?”

Manic Street Sign Preachers

One unexpected consequence of the study is that the Welsh tourist board has had to spend £65,000 (Welsh pounds) updating the signage throughout the country to warn all tourists that their walks to local shops, cafes, and more, will take at least two minutes longer than it will the locals.

King Charles in Buckingham Palace ‘where you from?’ race row

The Editor
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King Charles in Buckingham Palace ‘where you from?’ race row
King Charles in Buckingham Palace ‘where you from?’ race row
King Charles

A transcript was released today of a ‘prolonged and unacceptable racist diatribe’ which took place at a Buckingham Palace reception yesterday.

Gzoni Lufani, boss of London charity Waste-a-Space, which celebrates and disowns black and African heritage at the same time, was at the Palace reception to celebrate the achievements of English women who dress up to the nines in culturally African fashions but manage to evade accusations of cultural appropriation – because they are black.

Lufani, an admirer of Princess Meghan Markle of Los Angeles, whom herself sees racism everywhere, released the following transcript of a conversation that she alleges took place between herself and a befuddled, geriatric, royal hanger-on who had probably had a few too many.

Lufani             S’up blood?                

HRH                ‘Er. Yes. It is rather!

Lufani             Y’alright?

HRH                Actually, I was hoping to get out of here ASAP. He he he!

Lufani             Yaah wah handsome man.

HRH                Yaah? Wah?

Lufani             Weh yuh deh from?

HRH                Erm? Where am I from? Erm? Windsor I think?

Lufani             Nuh. Wah part of Windsa yuh from?

HRH                I don’t know. The records were destroyed in the fire.

Lufani             Well yuh muss kno weh yuh from mi spend time inna Hackney weh yuh deh from?

HRH                Well… er… here. The UK. Actually I kind of own the…

Lufani             Nuh Buh wah nationality a you?

HRH                Well, as I said. I am born here and am British.

Lufani             Nuh Buh weh duh yuh really cum fram, weh duh unnu people cum from?

HRH                My people? What is this? Do you mean my fam?

Lufani             Oh mi cyaah si mia gwine ave ah challenge a get yuh tuh seh weh yuh fram.  Wen did yuh fos cum here?

HRH                We’ll let’s see. Papa was from Greece and had something to do with Denmark. Mama, well it’s rather complicated but mama’s great-great-grandmother was Queen Victoria of whose consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, I am a patrilineal descendant, so too of his family, the German princely House of Wettin. But it doesn’t end there. He he he! Through my great-great-grandmother Queen Alexandra, I am descended from the Danish royal House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a line of the North German house of Oldenburg, one of the oldest in Europe, don’t you know?

Lufani             Oh Mi kno wi git deh inna end. Yuh ah German!

HRH                Err? Camilla!

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