xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Next in the England-to-U.S. TV Pipeline: The newest reality TV show scheduled by London’s Channel 5 for 2003 is a celebrities-in-detox series, in which marginally known entertainment personalities go to an island for a week to undergo enemas and colonic irrigation, with full camera coverage. A station spokeswoman told The Independent, “The celebrities will have to survive for a week on oral enemas, which basically means drinking things like olive oil. They’ll also be analyzing their own poo.”

Some callers to Boston’s major homeless shelters became angry that their requests to help out this year on Thanksgiving and Christmas day were rejected because the shelters have too many volunteers on those days (yet too few on the other 363 days a year). A Boston Globe reporter found that volunteers even try to cajole officials to bump them up the waiting list (170 on one shelter’s list, which started accumulating names in August), but express disappointment at suggestions that they help at less “popular” (and less prestigious) suburban shelters.

Ian Jewell, an employee of the West Somerset (England) District Council, was rewarded by his bosses after his counting revealed that the toilet paper in the restrooms contained fewer than the 320 sheets per roll stated in the supplier’s contract (September).

And a popular pastime in Bismarck, N.D. (according to an October Associated Press report), is a game called “Slip,” in which teenagers walk the city during summer nights trying to avoid cars’ headlights. (If they get flashed, they’re out.) Said one teenage girl, “It’s better than sitting around on the couch on a Friday night watching a movie.”
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD