A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

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What happens when you drop a bomb? You get a bloody big hole, don’t you? Like a cave, in fact. So all we’re doing is making more caves for him to hide in. Get a grip, chaps.

As threatened, more from the Guinness Book of Female-Only Records:

Gossiping: On February 18, 1992, at 1.30pm, Joyce Blatherwick, a close friend of Agnes Banbury, popped round for a cup of tea and a chat, during the course of which she told Mrs Banbury, in the strictest confidence, that she was having an affair with the butcher.

After Mrs Blatherwick left at 2.10pm, Mrs Banbury immediately began to tell everyone she knew, swearing them all to secrecy.

By 2.30pm, she had told 128 people of the news. By 2.50pm, the number had risen to 372 and, by 4pm that afternoon, 2,774 people knew of the affair, including the local Amateur Dramatic Society, several knitting circles, a coachload of American tourists that she flagged down, as well as the butcher’s wife.

When a tired Mrs Banbury went to bed at 11.55pm that night, Mrs Blatherwick’s affair was common knowledge to 75,338 people, enough to fill Wembley Stadium.

Group Toilet Visit: The record for the largest group of women to visit a toilet simultaneously is held by 147 workers at the Department of Social Security, Longbenton.

At their annual Christmas celebration at a nightclub in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, on November 22nd, 1994, Mrs Beryl Crabtree got up to the toilet and was immediately followed by 146 other members of the party. Moving as a mass, the group entered the toilet at 9.52pm and, after waiting for everyone to finish, emerged two hours and 37 mins later.

Single Breath Sentence: An Oxfordshire woman became the first ever to break the 30-minute barrier for talking without drawing breath. Mrs Mavis Sommers, 48, of Cowley, smashed the previous record of 23 minutes when she excitedly reported an argument she’d had in the chemist’s to her neighbour.

She ranted on for a staggering 32 minutes and 12 seconds without pausing for air, before going blue and collapsing in a heap on the ground. She was taken to hospital in a wheelbarrow but was released later after check-ups.

At the peak of her marathon, she achieved an unbelievable 680 words per minute, repeating the main points of the story an amazing 114 times while her neighbour, Mrs Dolly Knowles, nodded and tutted.

— BARRY BEELZEBUB
The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this newspaper, or of anyone who joined me in the hour-long queues at the tills in the shops on Monday morning. It’s Monday morning, for God’s sake. What are you doing out shopping at that time?

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