if it’s news to me, it must be news to you!
Luxury vending: A dealer in luxury supercars in Singapore has created a fifteen storey high vending machine where you can pick up a Lamborghini, Ferrari or Maserati at the touch of a button.
Wrong ‘un: Kim Jong-un’s bid for world domination has spread as far as Teeside after a North Korean flag mysteriously appeared outside a house in Ingleby Barwick.
Eternal hit: The Killers first hit Mr Brightside entered the UK charts in 2004 and for reasons that no-one can quite explain it has remained in the charts every week ever since.
Sense and insensitivity: Certain people in certain quarters have got their knickers in a twist over the ‘prettified’ image of Jane Austen on the new £10 note. If you click on the image right you can compare the portrait with the only contemporary likeness drawn by Jane’s sister Cassandra. The image on the new note seems to be based on the later 1870 engraving. In any event, I’m not sure why such an infamous purveyor of malware should be honoured in this way.
Robots in disguise: A father and son team in Russia have created their own Transformers robot out of an old Lada car.
Dust to dust: Thinking about your choice of funeral has been a tossup between burial or cremation – until now. A third option of alkaline hydrolysis or ‘green cremation will soon be available in the UK.
One track mind: We have seen some odd couplings, as it were, such as the woman who married herself in 2015, but the latest takes some beating – Carol Santa Fe who has married Sante Fe railway station.
Brief lives: Bad guy actor Powers Boothe; ex-MotoGP champion Nicky Hayden; Stalin’s grandson Yevgeny Dzhugashvili (died in December); geneticist and ‘miracle plant breeder’ Dilbagh Athwal; oo7 and The Saint actor Roger Moore and; of course all those who died in the Manchester terror attack but especially for Martyn Hett who was a friend of my daughter’s from her college days. I leave you with poet Tony Walsh’s tribute to my great home city.