IT MUST BE TRUE… I read it in the tabloids

A giant revolving model of Father Christmas dancing in a tutu has infuriated Italy’s right-wing parties. The statue in Modena shows Santa pirouetting in a leotard, holding aloft a red heart. Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party demanded the “unnatural” installation be removed; one critic said the “Santa Claus in tights” showed a “hatred for our traditions”. Lorenzo Lunati, its creator, said his Santa was just trying “to shrug off some of the weight we’ve been carrying recently”.

Army bomb experts were called to an A&E after a man arrived with a WWII anti-tank shell lodged in his rectum. The patient had reported to the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, explaining that he’d fallen on the 17cm by 6cm projectile after finding it while clearing out his belongings. “He said he put it on the floor, then he slipped and fell on it – and it went up his arse,” a source told The Sun. “He was in a considerable amount of pain. I think he collected military memorabilia.” The patient was later discharged and is expected to make a full recovery.

An Italian anti-vaxxer tried to wriggle out of getting his Covid jab by turning up to his appointment wearing a fake arm. The man, anxious to obtain the health pass needed to enjoy some freedoms in Italy, paid hundreds of euros for the prosthetic arm – but was caught out when a suspicious nurse at the vaccine hub in Biella, near Turin, asked him to take off his shirt before his jab. “It was well made, but it wasn’t the same colour,” the nurse said of the fake arm. The man, 50, could now face fraud charges.