In this classic BBC sketch, Harry Enfield exposes the problems that arise when women offer an opinion of their own. It’s just not the done thing, ladies!
Women, Know Your Limits!
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Rumour has it this is the Editor of the Suffolk Gazette getting overtaken by just about every other cyclist on the road during a 100km cycling event. If it was him, he is now insisting he has got much slimmer and faster since then.
He is a liar.
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Exclusive
By Doug Trench
Defence Editor
Tensions between Suffolk and Norfolk have taken a worrying turn for the worse after a number of spies were exposed and run out of Ipswich pubs.
A double agent informed his Suffolk handlers that Norfolk’s Peasant Army had trained spies to infiltrate “the enemy” and monitor gossip in boozers south of the county border.
But when they tried to carry out their spying missions, the Norfolk spooks stuck out like a sore thumb.
A Suffolk Freedom Force intelligence officer told us: “The spies all had the same modus operandi: they sat at the corner of a bar on their own pretending to read a copy of the East Anglian Daily Times.
“We sent a dispatch to all our operatives urging them to investigate the watering holes in Ipswich, and before long they had identified five Norfolk spies in various establishments, including The Greyhound in Ipswich.
“Each imposter was run out of the pubs and was lucky to escape with his life.”
The increase in undercover missions is causing a growing diplomatic crisis between the neighbouring East Anglian counties, with full-blown military confrontation, not seen since the days of the great 1840 Norfolk Dumpling Famine, a realistic possibility.
There has been a build up of forces on both sides of the border in recent months, with the Suffolk Freedom Force moving a battalion of men, including the fearsome 2nd Pitchfork Infantry, to stations near Hoxne.
Intelligence reports suggest the Norfolk Peasant Army is also preparing for war, moving the 6th Wooden Club Grenadiers and the 14th Donkey Cavalry down from Wells-next-the-Sea in the north of the county to the Scole area, near the border with Suffolk – and only five miles from Hoxne.
A local farmer told the Suffolk Gazette: “There’s quite a build up, and I’m seeing military manoeuvres every day. Clearly they are preparing for the worst. I have cleared out my cellar to use as a shelter just in case.”
And Stradbroke hardware store owner, Jack Daniels said: “We’ve been inundated with orders for pitchforks. Clearly something is about to kick-off.”
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The Global Positioning System (GPS) was first invented in Suffolk, the release of secret Government papers has revealed.
The files, previously hidden in the National Archive under the 60-year rule, shows GPS navigation, now common in all cars and on mobile phones, was first developed in Mendlesham.
For years travellers venturing north on the A140 towards the hostile and almost uninhabited county of Norfolk have passed the huge 1,000-foot mast at Mendlesham, and assumed it was some kind of television or radio transmitter.
But this has now been exposed as a government-sponsored hoax in order to cover up for the vital work of boffins at the former WW2 airfield.
Honouring the local dialect the project was originally called Grut’old thing Pointen Sky’ards – but Americans on the project just couldn’t get the accent right and changed the name.
But it appears the local population were in on the secret all along. Farmer Bill Hook from Stonham explained: “They made the mast just tall enough that you can see it from anywhere in Suffolk, but not from any surrounding counties.
“By looking in the direction of the mast you can work out where you are to the nearest half a mile. There’s a particular technique – you have to raise your arm horizontally in the direction of the mast, make a fist, extend your thumb upwards and then count how many of the lights on the mast are obscured.
“One light is one mile away and so on. If you can’t see the mast then you’re officially known as ‘Lost’.”
The project was scrapped, however, following a particularly foggy day in 1963 when the whole population of Suffolk was declared ‘Lost’.
Americans on the doomed scheme returned to NASA and developed the successful satellite-based system that so many people rely on today. That same system is now being put to good use in the search for signs of intelligent life in Norfolk.
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By Ivor Traktor, Farming Correspondent (intern)
A fascinating book about the devastating 1840 Norfolk Dumpling Famine is heading for the top of this year’s Christmas best-sellers list.
Suffolk author Derek Trotter has uncovered new evidence about the horrific famine, which wiped out tens of thousands of Norfolk peasants and sparked the war with Suffolk which, like that between North and South Korea, is still not “officially” over.
Mr Trotter, 73, of Lowestoft, has pieced together new claims that it was undercover agents from Suffolk who caused the famine by introducing a virus that prevented the dumplings from growing.
Rather than starve, and in desperate attempts to escape violence and hardship, tens of thousands of Norfolk peasants began trying to cross the border into wealthy Suffolk from March 1840.
But guards refused entry, sparking skirmishes that escalated quickly into full-scale conflict, with pitchforks and shovels used to awful effect by both sides.
Those so-called Dumpling Dustups began the fierce hostilities that remain between Norfolk and Suffolk today. The war has never been truly declared over, and fights continue in the borderlands and when the counties’ two football teams meet up.
Mr Trotter said: “It took years of research, but my book will for the first time reveal it was Suffolk dirty work that caused the famine.
“It tells how the peasants watched in horror as their dumpling crop failed in front of their eyes, causing social unrest and eventually war with Suffolk.
“The book then details how a scientist from Cromer came up with an antidote for the dumpling virus, and how crops were able to recover from 1841 onwards – but not before 37,000 Norfolk people died.”
Mr Trotter’s book, published by the Suffolk Defence Archive, is available from all good book shops, and some bad ones, priced at a very reasonable £4.99.
By Colin Allcabs, Consumer Correspondent
A woman from Essex is furious because a local store will not change her “faulty” tight scarf.
Blonde-haired Chelsea Gooch, 24, claimed the four-foot woollen garment became far too tight each time she tied it around her neck.
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“Debenhams should have exchanged the scarf for another, or given me my money back. It’s disgusting,” she fumed.
Chelsea, an executive assistant trainee administrator beauty technician from Witham, had intended to enjoy a day of shopping in London’s Stratford to stock up her wardrobe for Autumn.
But she stood on the wrong platform and ended up on a train to Ipswich instead.
She said she decided to stay in Ipswich to get her clothes, but will now “never return” because of the tight scarf incident.
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A Debenhams insider told the Suffolk Gazette: “We are sorry Miss Gooch is upset. We did suggest that if she did not pull the ends of the scarf together so hard it would not be tight.
“Sadly she would not take our advice on board. Thousands of women enjoy our scarf collection each Autumn, and no one else has a problem.”
The £5.99 blue-coloured scarf is now discarded in a cupboard at Chelsea’s apartment.
“It’s no use to me,” she said. “I might give it to my mum for Christmas – she’s smaller than me so it will fit her.”
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Exclusive
By Hugh Dunnett, Crime Correspondent
Police are warning men not to be taken in by an attractive older woman who is trawling Suffolk pubs offering to fulfill drinkers’ fantasies of having sex with a mother and her daughter.
Officers say the shapely blonde, believed to be in her late fifties, targets a vulnerable man sitting alone in a bar and offers to buy him a drink.
After a while of innocent chat, she asks if he has ever fantasised about a threesome with a woman and her daughter.
If the man, fuelled by a few pints of lager, shows interest, she invites him back to her house in Ipswich.
One victim, 27, who was too embarrassed to be named, issued a statement via the Suffolk Police press office to explain what happens.
He said: “I had enjoyed a couple of drinks and this woman, although a mature lady, was strikingly attractive.
“I had often wondered what it must be like to have a threesome with a woman and her daughter, so I couldn’t believe my luck when she suggested just that after sidling up to me in the pub.
“When we got back to her place I was getting very excited, and was told to wait in the sitting room.
“Only then did I discover the terrible truth. As I sat there, the woman went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up, ‘Mum, are you still awake?’
“I’ve never run out of a house so quick in my life.”
A police spokesman said: “This woman is not breaking any laws, but she is not being entirely truthful with the poor young men she is befriending in pubs.”
Exclusive
By Rob Banks, Crime Editor
Suffolk Police’s controversial Apache gunship helicopter is patrolling the skies again after the force’s pilots completed a rigorous training regime.
The fearsome helicopter was mothballed earlier this year when confused police pilots accidentally blew up a vicarage in Needham Market.
They became baffled by the gunship’s hi-tech weaponry and navigation systems, and fired off a lethal Hellfire sidewinder missile by mistake, causing severe damage to the vicarage while the vicar Evan Elpuss was hosting members of the local Women’s Institute for afternoon tea.
Thankfully no one was seriously hurt in the incident, which occurred while the Apache was chasing down a bicycle thief, although WI treasurer Gladys Worthington-Smyth was injured by a flower pot.
Now Suffolk Police, under pressure to shave more than £125million from its budget, is bringing back the deadly chopper to become the most effective crime deterrent in the country.
A force spokesman pointed out that the gunship would also prove to be highly effective in combatting the waves of country bumpkin migrants trying to get into Suffolk from Norfolk every night.
A police insider said: “The Apache sends a very powerful message to the criminal fraternity, and this will be a great comfort to the law-abiding people of Suffolk.
“Apple scrumpers, speeding motorists, car-tax dodgers – they’ll all be fair game as we crackdown on crime.
“And now our pilots have completed the new training course, there is much less chance of them accidentally firing off a missile towards a primary school, or spraying the main shopping street in Woodbridge with machine gun fire.”
Meanwhile, The Rev Evan Elpuss has forgiven the police for blowing up his beloved Victorian vicarage.
“These things happen,” he said, while writing this Sunday’s sermon from his caravan.
