I know why I'm gullible, it's my mum's fault.
When I was a young lad, my mum used to make throwaway remarks which I (and my brother) used to soak up like sponges.

One Saturday afternoon at about 3 o'clock she asked me to pop next door to the newsagents and get tomorrow's papers, to save her getting up and getting them on Sunday morning. Off I went, only to be told "We haven't got tomorrow's papers yet - if we did we'd know all the football scores!".

I'm from Braintree, the birthplace of John Ray, who apparently is some sort of botanist. When I was about 14, the council erected a statue of him in the town centre, on a big stone base. One evening, whilst standing on the aforementioned base, I marvelled over how from the ground it looked lifesized, but was in fact about 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide.
Commenting on this to my mum, she replied with "Yeah, it's lifesize - he was a giant". My exclamations of amazement were greeted with a totally straight face and it was forgotten - until several years later she overheard me telling someone in the pub about the life size statue of John Ray.

It wasn't just me though; my (30-year old) brother recently embarrassed himself telling the entire office where he works that his great-uncle was the Safety Officer on the Titanic =D


/length? Well, apparently he was a giant, remember...
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 26 Aug 2008, 23:15, 1 reply)

safety officer aboard the titanic?
my great-uncle was the captain of the titanic.

100% FACT.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Wed 27 Aug 2008, 20:49, closed)