Free Barmy Britain by Jack Crossley

cat magazine. The Guardian reports that Jill’s own cat, Coco, prefers to snuggle on the chest of her boyfriend Tim and says: ‘Tim thinks the explanation is that men’s chests are more level’.
    Guardian
    Dogs top the list of animals used in advertising. Cats come next, although perceived by some as being selfish and cruel. Surprisingly pigs come third, despite ‘a reputation for less than pristine personal hygiene’. Researchers found that ‘Britons have an almost ludicrous affinity to pigs. If you go into almost any home in the country they are there – in figurines, pictures or just piggybanks’.
    Daily Telegraph
    A hamster was seen bowling along inside its toy exercise ball on the hard shoulder of the M6.
    Independent on Sunday

    Environmental health officers in Barbegh, Suffolk, received a complaint from a woman that a neighbour’s horse was urinating too loudly. The complaint was among the top ten of their most unusual calls.
    Sunday Times
    A lost pet tortoise was found safe and well on a motorway having crawled one-and-a-half miles in three weeks. Freddy, owned by Wendy Passell of Otterbourne, near Winchester, was seen plodding south on the M3 having managed an average speed of 0.0034mph. Proud Mrs Passell said: ‘People don’t realise how hyperactive Freddie is.’
    Evening Standard
    A survey in Our Dogs magazine found a bull terrier which swallowed a bottle cap, a toy car and some wire and some cling film. It was operated on, the objects were removed and the dog was put on a drip. It ate the drip.
    Sunday Times
    Legendary actress Sarah Bernhard had a pet alligator which died after she fed him too much champagne. And her boa constrictor died after swallowing a cushion.
    Daily Mail

    Bathers swam towards a huge basking shark (they can be around 40ft long and weigh up to seven tonnes) which appeared off Porthcurno beach in Cornwall.
    Lifeguards were quickly on the scene – but they were there to protect the shark, not the bathers. Basking sharks are a protected species which feed on plankton and are regarded as harmless. ‘We try to keep people away from them’, said one of the guards.
    The Times
    A 1997 edition of The Times reported:
    The royal pets include a number of ‘dorgis’ – crosses between the Queen’s corgis and Princess Margaret’s dachshunds.
    Royal photographer Norman Parkinson was having lunch at the Palace one day and had the temerity to ask how the breeds could couple successfully, considering their different stature.
    ‘Oh,’ said the Queen, ‘it’s really very simple. We have a little brick.’
    The Times
    A Kennel Club official commented: ‘The dachshund was evolved to chase badgers down holes and corgis to round up cattle. If anyone loses a herd of cattle down a badger hole, dorgis are just the dogs to get them out.’
    The Times
    J. Mervyn Williams, of Huddersfield, remembers calling into a pub in Wales in the early 1960s when the locals were discussing how much it cost having sheep neutered by vets ‘since old Edwards died’. He asked them if he could make a good living if he set up doing the job old Edwards did.
    They asked him: ‘Have you got your own teeth?’
    Daily Mail
    Dogs and pubs rival the weather as subjects of conversation among the English. The Daily Telegraph had a whole raft of letters on them:
Children should be barred from pubs, but dogs are an essential accessory.
Dogs are grotesquely over-privileged manure machines and should be kept out of pubs.
Dogs are never the pub bore.
Landlords who want to ban dogs should be banned from running pubs.
    Daily Telegraph
    Warwickshire Fire Brigade swung into action in response to a 999 call. It sent three fire engines (with five men to each engine) and two men with a rubber dinghy. They travelled 35 miles to a drainage tunnel at Earlswood Lakes, near Solihull – and rescued a trapped duck.
    BBC News / Guardian

    Sue Baines, of Quernmore, Lancashire, had a cat called Geoffrey which was known as Geoffrey