IT MUST BE TRUE… I read it in the tabloids

An unnamed visitor to Lusty Glaze beach in Cornwall has called for the removal of a troublesome rock. “It is a gorgeous place,” she wrote in an online review, “but there is a big rock in the middle part of the beach, which is so dangerous. I was there last week for a swim and I fell over it and badly injured my leg. Something needs to be done about this rock as it is covered with beautiful waves and nobody can see it!” Lusty Glaze is not the only Cornish beach to have attracted criticism recently: a tourist in Perranporth complained that the sand was “too damp for building sandcastles”. Domino’s Pizza has dropped an innovative promotion in Russia after it proved alarmingly successful. The company promised 100 free pizzas a year for life to anyone who got themselves tattooed with its logo; but when 381 people took up the offer within four days, it abruptly announced that the deal was being withdrawn.

A Blackpool man faked his own kidnapping so that he could go drinking with his friends. Leigh Ford rang his girlfriend, Zoe Doyle, who was 35 weeks pregnant, to say that he would be tortured unless she paid a ransom. Panic-stricken, Doyle transferred all the money she had – £80 – and informed the police, who called in a helicopter and hostage negotiator; when Ford returned home the next day as if nothing had happened, he was arrested for wasting police time and sentenced to 16 weeks in prison. Doyle, however, has forgiven him. “The silly thing was, it was his own money,” she said. “It just didn’t make sense.”