How freeze one of your Balls off in a heatwave.

"Britain's heatwave, which has claimed dozens of sunburn and heat exhaustion victims, has now produced its first case of frostbite.

A motorist was diagnosed with the condition after driving with his toes too close to the air conditioning vent on the 400 kilometre journey from London to Manchester.

One of his toes started to turn black and another went blue.

"It was incredibly hot," Mike Ball, 46, told the Guardian newspaper. "I slipped off my shoe and sock because my car is an automatic and I don't need to use my left foot. I didn't realise anything was wrong until the next day when my foot was extremely painful."

Mr Ball went to his doctor and was prescribed a cure for mild frostbite. He is expected to make a full recovery."

Which is more than can be said for the Guardian editor who thought the story was worth running.

etc

The Chapel Driftwood Home for Hopeless Causes: Progress report on patient 132b (Mr B Hughes aged thirty-nine and eleven twelfths, of no fixed mental abode).

Patient shows signs of further deterioration through excessive exposure to sunlight and the banality of modern existence. Take this extract from his Enid Blyton's Bumper Jotter for Junior Diarists example:

"Last night I dreamt that I had taken a weekend break at Archaeology World, a depressive dump not too dissimilar to Pontins out of season with the added attractions of faked archaeological digs and cheap Hollywood look-a-likies wandering around killing the guests.
As one of my fellow detainees in the chalet next to mine put it to reporters, "I was thrilled to witness my brother-in-law shot repeatedly by a five foot two inch Welsh Arnie."
I dug a test pit round the back of the "Wattling Street Stores" and was delighted to uncover two strategically placed Victorian medicine bottles and half a Roman conversation. The conversation appeared to be written in Latin and was contained within a speech bubble with bite marks taken from the corners."

Doctor's comments: Patient unable to separate Time Team from fiction. Recommend five milligrams of whisky to be injected into the buttocks at regular intervals.

Shitty little virus ... O.K. normally that would introduce a post about Johnny Howard, but not in this case.

Beware of this little bugger. I've just had a personal confrontation with it. I think I've scared it off. Who knows? Where's Arthur Marrow when you find your little garden laptop is infested with w32.blaster.worms? Down at the bloody pub dining drinking out on stories of snails bigger and uglier than Widdy and slugs more spineless than the majority of Tone's back bench I'll warrant!

I wonder how many ex Microsoft programmers have highly paid jobs with virus software manufacturers. Just a cynical thought.

Two frogs have moved into my garden. I've no idea why as the closest thing we have to a pond is a small, moss-covered patch in one corner where the neighbour's cat relieves himself every morning.
One of the frogs is extremely small, about the size of a grain of salt that hasn't been feeling very well lately. The other is large and fat, like two boarding house manageresses squeezed into a Volks Wagon Beetle.
They have taken up residence under my azalea where, every evening, I can hear them singing shanties and frying slugs, snails and vine weevils around a small campfire. This is the sort of behaviour I want to encourage, although the sea shanties can get a bit raucous as the evening wears on. To this end I have supplied them with small cattle prods with which they can defend themselves against the neighbour's cat by prodding its nose until it sizzles. Unfortunately frogs are very stupid and difficult to train and so far they've burnt several of my wallflowers and left a nasty scorch mark on three articles of washing, namely my boxer shorts.
However, this is by no means a free ride for the little green shits! Clearing my garden of all manner of creepy crawlies is all very well and good but if the freeloading, asylum seeking bastards think they can pull one over on me then they've got another think coming. If they answer me back just once then I'll be forced to pursue them round the flower pots and batter them senseless with a Neolithic palstave until they either apologise and return to their pond or, alternatively, croak.

The Iraqi Road Map

Iain Duncan Smith, lightweight leader of the Tory Party (presenting a pale, washed-out face to the general public in the hopes that it'll help them forget about Maggie's cadaverous one) has demanded (Oooh! You are manly Iain!) that Tony Blair apologise for smearing murdered dead government scientist, David Kelly's, name. (Editor's comment: Yeah, right...like Uncle Tony's really likely to follow Granny Smith's empty demands!)
"Smith (38 going on 90) has been attending Shadowy Cabinet 'U Turn' courses recently," purred Ann Widdicomb, sexy blonde sea mine and temptress minx. "Condemning the government now after he backed them one hundred per cent before the Iraq War is hardly likely to bring the thousands of innocent dead people in Iraq back to life."
Widdicomb stroked her hair knowingly, a flirtatious glint in her beady eyes.
"Of course," she added, running her bulbous tongue evocatively round her pillowslip lips. "We're still glad those ragheads are dead because, well, frankly, the more brown stiffs the less asylum seekers we'll have knocking on our back doors."

Meanwhile the Basil Bush administration in America has admitted to using something a bit like napalm on a few thousand Iraqis during the conflict. Following the disgraceful use of napalm during the Vietnam War ("Uncle Sam says burn those slant eyes!") the USA signed a UN agreement banning the use of this destructive form of burning chemical death.
Frightened about the prospects of a violation of the treaty sparking off reprisals a spokesman for the American authorities replied, "Well, it isn't exactly napalm. Napalm is made from petrol whereas the stuff we burned the ragheads with was made from kerosene."
Spotting amateurs spin in action, Alistar Campbell caught the morning plane to New York armed only with the late Dr Kelly's notebooks regarding the chemical differences between cyanide and rat poison.

C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas a victoire in la guerre against terrorisme.

Co-pilot arrested after bomb-in-shoe joke

An Air France co-pilot has been arrested at New York's John F Kennedy International Airport after joking that he had a bomb in his shoe before boarding a flight to Paris.

A spokesman for the Queens district attorney's office says the pilot, French citizen Philippe Rivere, will face court for falsely reporting an incident in the first and second degree.

The charges carry a cumulative sentence of up to 11 years in prison.

Port Authority spokeswoman Tiffany Townsend says the pilot was detained at a security checkpoint in the airport after making "comments that were deemed inappropriate".

Law enforcement sources say the pilot had initially refused to pass through a metal detector at the checkpoint.

They say he also declined to remove his shoes when asked to do so.

"At some point during the exchange, he said, 'I have a bomb in my shoe,' and then he tried to leave the checkpoint," one source said, adding that the pilot was arrested by Port Authority police.

Prior to his arraignment, the pilot was being held at a detention facility in the airport.

In Paris, the French airline said he had been arrested following "misinterpreted remarks".

This article presents an incredibly difficult ethical dilemma.

Does one condemn the A'merkins for being paranoid and lacking a sense of humour, and side with M. Rivere?

Does one applaud said paranoid humourless A'merkins for dealing with french arrogance with the threat of 11 years porridge?

Bottom line ... mark up another 15/2 to Osama and his merry terrorist men.