A friend of mine (bless her)
Usually this girl is more than a little gullible. In the past we've managed to convince her that:
1) iPods get heavier if you put more songs on them,
2) lightbulbs have dead fireflies in them through which electricity is passed, and when one blows it's because the firefly exploded,
3)if you sent a text message in English but your phone's language was in Turkish, it would translate it before sending. We then proceeded to send her texts of complete gibberish such as "laklakh rotito mo por la kakalh terekhma" to prove it.
4) my sister was adopted and mentioning it was illegal under the Adopted Children's Act 1989

...etc. etc.

But this story tops the lot because she almost inadvertantly got her own back.

My dear friend once came into work with an astonishing story...
She exclaimed, "Immigration isn't anywhere near as much of a problem here as some places. Apparently there are so many immigrants entering The Netherlands these days that it's physically making the country too heavy so it's sinking into the North Sea!"

We all looked on with a little disbelief and a lot of scepticism, especially considering how the Netherlands is, well, part of a massive continental landmass of several thousand tonnes. We enquired further into how she had heard this, and she said she'd heard it in an interview on the news. She was so insistent and I guess we all wanted it to be true, so much so that some people actually started to believe her. A couple of people started ranting about how it was terrible and it wouldn't have happened if Thatcher was still around (how Thatcher would affect Holland, I have no idea. But you know Daily Mail readers...). We left it at that and got on with our work.

So later one of my friends tuned into (I think it was) the BBC News website to catch up on world events, where he was confronted with one of those video news stories. Calling us all over, we saw a copy of the interview she had been referring to! It was true!!! However, our disbelief was short lived upon noticing the title "Netherlands sinking under Immigration problem" accompanied by a chat with one of the leading economists in Holland.

...The daft bint had thought they meant 'sinking' literally.
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:12, 2 replies)

"the Netherlands is, well, part of a massive continental landmass of several thousand tonnes"
"Several thousand tonnes"? Gosh, as much as that?
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:24, closed)

...
I like both the story and the response.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:33, closed)