Mr Daniel Hines, a cobbler from Bedford, has recently been fined £6000 for the unlawful use of other people's shoes. For the last twenty years Mr Hines, who does not own a pair of shoes himself, has been availing himself of the footwear left in his care by the customers at his thriving heel bar, using them to go out shopping, visit friends or even for walks in the park. However, a recent investigation uncovered Mr Hines' nefarious activities and the police swooped on him last June. During the three day trial, the jury heard eyewitness reports of Mr Hines smooching about Sainsbury's in a pair of brown suede slip-ons, and watched security video footage of him buying a newspaper and a packet of liquorice allsorts in WH Smith sporting navy blue ankle length moon boots. However, the most damning evidence was provided by Mrs Denise Rigsby of 42 The Larches, Biggleswade, who does not wish to be named. "I had suspected that something strange was going on for some time," said Mrs X. "So when I took my favourite pair of white slingbacks to be re-heeled, I made a careful note of the mileage. Sure enough, when I got them back I noticed that there was an extra three hundred miles on the clock. When I confronted Mr Hines about it, he told me it was because the new heels had to be 'run in' but I later discovered that he had been seen out in them at the Emerald Palace night-club in Warfarin Street."
Mr Hines has refused to comment on the case, but a spokesman for the evil cobbler told as that he also asked for several pairs of sandals and a front door key to be taken into account.
Kurt Smurf, a naturalist working for the zoological gardens in Dresden has discovered that its small collection of red-bellied parrots is capable of squawking many of Mozart's most famous compositions. "Oh yes, most definitely," Kurt told us. "Hello there. I am walking past the cages here not so very long ago, and am hearing all of a sudden an extract from Mozart's Symphony in G, No 12. As clear as if it was bells. Could I say hello to my mother in Munich?"
Since then, Kurt has spent a great deal of time studying the parrots, making careful note of the tunes they have been performing. "Oh boy," he told us. "There's no mistaking it. So far I am hearing them perform twelve major symphonies, two piano concertos and last Tuesday I am also catching a brief snatch of his Rondo in F. It is very strange. Anyhow, it has been my mother's birthday this week, and I am forgetting her card. So happy birthday mother, yes."
Intrigued by this, Kurt delved deeper into the mystery and discovered that the parrots are descended from a pair that were presented to the zoo by Mozart himself in 1791. Kurt has an interesting theory about this. "I am sitting down and I am thinking, and I am wondering what all this can be. And then, bang! It hits me. I am thinking that Mozart must be using his parrots as some kind of recording device, yes? Why else would he want to keep parrots? He must have used the parrots to memorise the tunes as he was writing them, in the same way that someone like George Michael or David Hasselhoff will use a cassette recorder when they suddenly have an idea for a great pop song. The tunes are passed down from one generation of parrots to the next, and Bob is your uncle!"
It's an interesting idea, and one which may have extraordinary possibilities. Kurt has been unable to identify one of the compositions that the parrots regularly perform and believes it to be a previously unknown work by the late composer. He is currently working hard to orchestrate the piece and hopes to persuade the Berlin Philharmonic to perform it for the first time at a special concert this summer. "It should be a really special event," he enthuses, then adds thoughtfully. "Of course, I could be wrong. I could have just spent all this time listening to a lot of parrots squawking. Still, hey ho... See you at Christmas mother!"
Bad news for Mr Dom Everly this week, as his previously thriving window cleaning business, Lord of the Rungs, goes into liquidation. Mr Everly blames the failure of the firm on a number of factors, but chief amongst them was his inability to recover the 'One Squeegee' - the mystical window wiper that would have given him dominion over the bustling market town of Ilkeston where he formerly plied his trade. Apparently, Mr Everly's fortunes took a downturn when the One Squeegee was stolen from him by a rival company, who then destroyed it by casting it into the fiery bucket of Mordor, just outside Nottingham. This left the company unable to fulfil many of its commitments, and trade became so bad that it eventually had to fold. That, at least, is Dom Everly's version of events, but it has to be said that, at the time of writing, his many creditors remain largely unsympathetic.
Imagine an army of genetically engineered Tom Joneses, pitched in an eternal battle against a giant, mutant Elvis clone. Think it could never happen? Ha! Well think again. Genetic science has come on in leaps and bounds, and it is not inconceivable that we will one day have the ability to clone human beings. The question is: will we be able to see the dangers in our ability to wield such God-like powers, and take a responsible approach to our mastery over nature?
"No chance," says self-professed expert, Timmy Wardle-Spume, himself the product of over six centuries of carefully controlled inbreeding. "However much we try to regulate and control this new science, it is inevitable that one day these revolutionary techniques will fall into the hands of maniacs who want to create vast armies of Tom Joneses, or huge, cybernetically enhanced Elvis-creatures. Oh yes, I know that some people might think that that kind of thing is cool, but just imagine the poor bastards caught in the crossfire. We're looking at the possibility of a conflict that could last for decades, centuries even, as each side fights to gain the upper hand. Vast areas of the planet could be reduced to uninhabitable wasteland and populations would be decimated. And there's worse. What if those foolish scientists decided to clone the likes of Neil Young or John Denver. Imagine herds of Bob Dylans sweeping across the grasslands, devouring crops and upsetting the delicate balance of nature. It doesn't bear thinking about."
Wardle-Spume's warnings might seem far-fetched, but there is already persuasive evidence that the Chinese have been secretly cloning Paul Simon. And there are even reports of a colony of Osmonds on an uncharted island off the coast of Indonesia. The world may be blind to the dangers, but Wardle-Spume remains committed to his cause, and is currently seeking support for a petition to the United Nations, which he hopes will lead to a complete moratorium on the cloning of singers. We wish him the best of luck.