when my mum was a kid....
she saw herself on tv, don't remember the full story, i just remember she was ill for weeks afterward.

the price of fame!
(dickytut, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 11:24, Reply)

Flag
My Dad used to work for a certain newspaper. One day, he found the flag that they had on the roof all the time lying in a skip outside. Seeing this as a waste of a flag, in his car it went. A few days later that certain newspaper ran a story about some surfers who used that flag as a marker point, and now didnt have one. That article didnt mention that they had throw the old flag away, just noting a "dissapearence", and it also didnt mention it now sits in my back cupboard. The different departments should really tell each other when they are changing flags so not to write articles about it...
(Pigmash, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 11:18, Reply)

Mile High Club
I'd forgotten about this one...

I used to work for Nortel Networks. Back in 1999 there was a *massive* scandal involving one of our managers (Hi Mandy) and an executive from Hallmark. Basically, they were flying back from the USA and she gave him a blow-job (alledgedly) and was caught. Full story below.

www.salon.com/people/rogue/1999/10/09/copter/

Kept us amused in the office for ages.

Cheers

Legless

BTW - I wonder why the edit-bot changed *h u g e* to moleste?
*moleste* - see?
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 11:17, Reply)

Oh dear god my most embarassing moment ever.
After going to the cinema, my mates and I went to kfc cause I was starving. Waited at the till, got pushed about bu journalists to get out the way cause Peter Mandelson was having his photo taken with one of the workers.
Bit ticked off, I returned to my table where my friend was checking out her new tarot cards. Guess who decides to nose his way in.
My friend reading the cards had no Idea who he was, and told him theres a lot of decite behind his back, he is going to be ill for a while but hes goung to (unfortunatly) live long.

We were in tears laughing. We were in 4 local papers from Hartlepool to Newcastle in which my elbow was in 3 of them.
( Blobcat Less Jaffacakes this year, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 11:01, Reply)

Only 5
But i was the first child in the new park when it was opened by the mayor!

I got a free refeshers bar in return for a cheesy photo!

In Cockermouth, Cumbria ages ago! :-)
( SocialRobot, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 10:54, Reply)

fat champ
In about '95 I won some Sega competition in the virgin megastore in London. I won a years supply of twix bars (about £97) and also every sega saturn game released in the next week delivered to me a few weeks before it hit the shops. The local paper put the fattest pic of me they could find and stuck it on page 3. The sods. At least they could have got a better pic of the event insted of the "giant" me. Still had the twix bars though.
(DarkSavior, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 10:53, Reply)

School Scandal
The tomfoolery which happened at my school's junior disco was revealed in The Sun. Along with ace subheadings such as "binge!" and "sordid disgrace!" it reported the various acts of drunken misadventure by a bunch of kids. One kid was found unconcious in a wheelie bin by the PE teacher (a chaperone of the evening), another unfortunate young fellow was thrown through a window, another lucky little man was found heavy petting behind the christmas tree, some lucky teachers were vomitted on, others, not so lucky, had the shit beaten out of them by mad gangs of drunken mini-chavs off their moobs on bucky. (though there probably was at least one massive chav that hit puberty at 7 - there's always one)

The valiant effort by the young children of a town called Haddington consequently made it into the Rogues Gallery of that shit magazine Loaded.
(jonnybignose, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 10:36, Reply)

SWF
www.swfocus.co.uk/index.htm (sadly issues have not been updated recently)

I've been in this lots of time, they'll post anything. This is in fact home of the famous Hegman (previously mentioned in your newsletter).
My last letter was moaning about nestle (i boycott) vending machines in the new swimming pool sports centre. I compared it to holding a slimming class in a cake shop and sneaked in some little britain quotes involving dust.
One friend of mine has made it her mission to get in there every week, she has managed this for quite a while now!
( moogy boobles, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 10:21, Reply)

pest
my friend was a photographer for the Uni newspaper. She persuaded myself and my female flatmate to pose for an article regarding prostitution in the city. A week later i receive my copy of the student rag and open it to find a double page spread with a photo of me leering out of a car, kerb crawling beside my flatmate who's dolled up in slut garb - fishnets etc.

sorry for the shit story.
(jonnybignose, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 10:15, Reply)

In me days as a student journo
I frequently made the front page.
The local papers were only too happy to stop the presses as I dashed in with my latest ground-breaking, controversial, scoop.
Here are two of my front-page exclusives:




(CFB)
(Pseudonym, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 9:52, Reply)

I was once
Featured in a local news programme talking to an enthusastic and bearded gentlemen about growing mushrooms on a toilet roll.

It took me rather by surprise as I hadn't realised I was being filmed.

I also had a letter published in the Guardian letters column. I suspect it's because I put my address is being at a University so they took me as some sort of expert, even though I was only a student. Interestingly, as a result I got a letter from some wacko woman demanding that I should've recognised her unique contribution to evolutionary theory.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Fri 11 Feb 2005, 9:45, Reply)

Not the newspaper, the telly
6 Years ago Wales beat England at rugby (snigger) and I was in my rugby club in Glasgow watching it. If Wales managed to beat England then Scotland would win the 5 Nations and we would all have to get pissed. Cool.

AAAAAAnyway, after the game we were told that Sky Sports News would be coming along to interviews a few of us (me and another few blokes) about the result. Queue mucho excitement. We get the beers in to look authentically "rugby lad" and it's going well, except that they didn't show until 9. By the time they got around to interviewing us, a bit of ganja had also gone around and we were all comprehensively wankered. The news is due on at 10pm, and have phoned my dad and asked him to record it.

The bulletin comes on and I look like I have drunk the world and am quite freely talking utter shite. My family were so proud. But my then girlfriend saw it and thought I was great, and rewarded me most generously in the bedroom. You love the fame, the length, the girth...
( Normanator Bad case of trapped wind since, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 8:53, Reply)

Way way back, many centuries ago
in 1991, after a lot of physical testing, I was accepted on a canoe trip with the Yorkshire Schools Exploring Society. We were originally going to canoe Lake Titicaca on the Peru/Bolivia border, but due to unforseen circumstances (cholera epidemic), about 2 months before the trip it was changed to the Yukon River.
Anyway, as the Hull Daily Mail only ever has news about chavs and how shit Hull schools are, I made page 5. With a picture of me in a canoe and all my canoeing gear - in a fucking swimming pool!

Was also in the HDM a few times for trampolining.
Oh, and when my gran died I placed a bereavement ad.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 5:14, Reply)

Shit haircut and great dog...


That’s me in the local rag (circa 1970) holding my dog Honey – she won first prize in a dog show at a local council run fete in Buckinghamshire. I recall the other mutts there were a bit too excitable to win – I think Honey being in heat may have had something to do with that. As my younger sister pointed out to me “Those dogs with the red lipsticks were very naughty weren’t they?”
The local town councilor presenting the prize was all smiles for the press, but afterwards he told me “Now fuck off back to London where you come from”. A bit taken aback I told him I wasn’t from London. “Bet your dad is then, you little shit” he replied. (My dad later told me that the councilor had a beef with Londoners moving into “his” town and clogging up the waiting list for council houses.)
I was so traumatized by this event that I emigrated to Australia when I was 27 and have never again entered a dog show.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a shit haircut...I had a crew cut the next summer.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 2:58, Reply)

Alas, not me but...
Our local camera shop made it into News of the World: The reason? The bloke who owned it sold hardcore pornography behind the counter and the police had nabbed him.

I walked past his house once when I was a kid and on a blackboard he had chalked up something about hardcore footage. At my tender age I thought he was selling videos of people at raves and left his advertisement unheeded.
(ElectricMonk is falling awake on, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 2:48, Reply)

I was responsible for a pile of turd in the Derby Evening Telegraph
Me and a friend lived in two suburbs of town seperated by farmers' fields, and after a night out we'd often park up in one of the fields for a sly smoke.

One night, we didn't realise how muddy the field was, and churned massive ruts in the field trying to get the car out. The next day, the farmer was so pissed off, he dumped a gigantic pile of horseshit the size of two transit vans over the entrance to the field, which blocked the way in quite effectively.

Until a few weeks later, when the hottest summer on record kicked in, and heated it up... at which point it appeared in a story called "...and the pongy stuff". Apparently, the smell in the local village was so bad, the residents had to keep their doors and windows shut all summer, and went to the newspaper to complain of their plight. Sorry, Spondon!
(MrMessiah, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 1:36, Reply)

Oh god .... Ive been trying to forget about this ........
I made the front page of the Watford Observer in Dec 1997. I happened to burn my house down AND almost kill the kid i was sharing it with at the same time ...

It all started At about 8am on a Sunday morning outside my digs that i shared with 2 other blokes (not gay!)and i had to be at a regular haunt for bikers in north London by midday. No problems! except i was having issues with my fuel getting to my carbs on my beast ... So ... there i was in the street outside my terraced house wresting with this sodding petrol tank. because i have an intellect the size of a small planet i decided it would be safer for all concerned if i took the tank away from the the roadside and into my back yard where it would be undisturbed. Great idea! Where this plan fell apart was when i went THROUGH the house with the tank and NOT through the alley!

Now (luckily for me in retrospect) its a straight line from my front door to my back door in my kitchen, so i strolled through holding the petrol tank safely in both hands. Got to the back door - LOCKED! Okay ... Put the tank down, unlocked and opened the door and then picked up the tank again. At this point all i recall is seeing an orange rainbow of flame arch from the kitchen corner towards the tank. There was a MASSIVE noise and rushing sound and then i was skidding across tarmac flat on my back. Yup .. Id been blown clean through the house into the street! ... Ouch!

Now normally this is where mu humorous tale would end ... But oh no ... i have more! Of these 2 mates i was sharing with one (the one i didnt see eye to eye with) has left early for sunday league footie but the other is tucked up snugly in bed! (not mine!) So im banging on doors getting ppl to call the polie/fire/ambulance/coastguard/boys brigade whilst shouting "wake the fuck up u cunt! The house is on fire!" ... But his room is at the back of the house above the kitchen so cant hear me.

Well .... he's upstairs and hes awake. And he can hear alot of banging and smashing (the windows and worktops cracking with the heat!) and thinks that myself and the other bloke are have a right old set too with our fists! (whats going on in his head!!??) After a coupla mins he starts thinking "jesus! they're killing each other!" and gets up ... Whereupon he starts jumping up and down because the floor (kitchen ceiling) is red-hot! "ooh" "ow!" "fucksocks!" he was shouting! then he notices the smoke .... And shits his jim-jams! So .... He throws a chair through his window causing a vacuum which sucks all the smoke in the house through his room ... In a coupla seconds hes flat out unconscious due to lack of oxygen .... Hes had better Sunday mornings im sure!

Outside 2 big red fire trucks have pulled up, a large crowd has formed and im being quizzed about the blaze ... like i have a clue! But i do manage to let them know there may someone in there ... And off they steam into the inferno. About a minute later they drag out my mate ... black as the ace of spades and stark bollock naked to boot! Hah! in front of the neighbours! The ambulance rushed us both to the hospital. Im fine - scorched eyebrows and a sore arse - and my mate was kept in a for a coupla days due to smoke inhalation.

What wasnt destroyed by fire was damaged by the water they chucked at it! the house was gutted and almost completely rebuilt ... And i had no household insurance so lost the lot! (let that be a lesson to the rest of you!)

The fire chief reckoned that there wasnt a 100% seal on the gas boiler and that had ignited the pertol fumes in the kitchen. (get em checked ppl!) The gas boiler exploded blowing me through the house which probably saved me before the petrol tank erupted dousing every thing in accellerant.

The police were very understanding ...

OB "So ... you must hate him then. To want to burn him alive.."

ME "ummm ... no..."

OB "behind in your payments were you....?"

ME "up to date actually....."

OB "Well its gotta be an insurance job ...."

ME"Ive lost the lot ... *sobs* "

And thats how i made front page of my local rag ...

(I also made the front page of the Daily Mail in 1993 too .... I have it somewhere .. I was out in Bosnia but i forget what the story was about ... it had a good pic of me tho! Very handsome i was!)
( Jaffacake, Fri 11 Feb 2005, 0:00, Reply)

My Wifes Latest Claim To Fame
Im proud to say that i was famous (when will i will i be famous, in the paper), well here is me, and i was in the paper, in my local rag.

I'm Mrs maffj and he's told me to put it here.

Here's me:-

BTW, he has an autobiography out on 14th March, Cavendish Square No 5, if you wanna come and support the hero that is MATT GOSS.




(maffj, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 23:52, Reply)

Fame
I have a long history of appearances in our local paper, edited by a quasi-fascist Christian who is now retiring to make evangelical TV shows in the USA.

I was pictured as a shaggy-haired youth with two equally dodgy-looking folks after we raised some money for the RNLI doing a triathlon.

I had a letter published bitching about a plan to turn a local arena into an opera venue, memorably saying that some people had more money than sense (I was 13). The editor hijacked my letter to suggest they should bring back stock car racing.

I had a series of letters arguing with a mental elderly communist who suggested a talk by a former Nazi Panzer Captain at my sixth form was in fact a Nazi propaganda session. She even suggested I had been brainwashed. She went away when a college governor piled into the fray too.

I was pictured in my sailor uniform on a Sea Cadet parade (the shame...).

I was pictured a couple of times with all the other folks who managed to get into Oxbridge, and managed to look especially weird in both photos. I was also listed with all the other bods who got fancy A levels.

On my first day as a volunteer at my local hospice I was pictured as part of an article about them winning the Queen's Award for volunteers, thus appearing as a pillar of the community with the minimum of effort.

I also had a letter in the Daily Mirror (ahem) about cremation but since it's national I'm not telling you about that.

I'm clearly a publicity whore.

My cousin is a police officer and there was a picture in the Express years ago where some bloke was arrested by armed police, and my cousin is kneeling on him and cuffing him, while grinning.
(DoctorJ last upset some twat who doesn't like swearing on, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:45, Reply)

Deep Fried Chocolate Exclusive
Alright, it's not exactly my local paper, but on my caravan holiday with my mum when I was 14, I managed to get into the Scarborough Express (or whatever the hell it's called) for eating a deep-fried, battered mars bar with cream on it. The caption said 'enjoying'.

I was sick all day. You can't trust the bloody media.
(b3tasux, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:43, Reply)

My college...
...entered every pupil on the Computer Studies course into the National IT User of the Year compo in 2001.

First there were the local heats, in which I came first out of everyone in the college.

Then there were the regional heats, in which I came first out of every winner of every college. Yay me.

At this point, these two articles appeared in the paper, arranged by my college:

Shropshire Star Article
Shrewsbury Chronicle Article

Note that I didn't say anything to the reporters about doing a degree in computer science. Journalism is great, ain't it?

Anyway, I then went on to the national finals where I again came first. Won a super duper £1400 IBM NetVista computer. And sold it. Profit!

Automatic entry into next years competition at the national level to see if I could get through to the International competition. Came second in that one. Bugger. Oh well, it was good while it lasted ;)

Oh, and my college basically tried to give themselves credit for teaching me everything I knew about Office. Gits.

//edit: Oh yeah, and I was 18 at the time. Who said research was dead, eh?
( GazChap, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:25, Reply)

My Gay Dog.
My dog, 'Boots', was gay. It is a fact. It used to shag other dogs, not bitches, on the corner of the street.

Anyway, it got it's jaw caught in the spokes of my bike trying to get a peice of meat my mum chucked to it. Cue the firebrigade, RSPCA, the whole fucking works coming out to rescue my dog. The result was picture of me (rather reluctantly) holding my dog in the local paper, with the completely fucked up bike in the foreground. Bastard fucking firemen.
( Laughing Boy, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:25, Reply)

Sadly not me but....
A guy I used to work with was proud of the fact that he and his then wife appeared on page 3 of the Daily Sport.
They'd gone to Las vegas to get married and whilst there they were caught up in an earthquake on honeymoon night.
They arrive home and a couple of days later these two guys turn up at the house and pretend their the Barnsley chronicle,they ask my mate about the story and ask him and his wife to pose on their bed, so my mates takes his shirt off, but his wife doesn't. Next thing its in the Daily Sport with the headline Earth Moves for Honeymoon Couple, on page 3 next to some big jugged model!
He used to have it framed in his sitting room apparently!
(Lord Monkey of Yorkshire,OBE killed a gipsy on...., Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:20, Reply)

fucking paper
ive been in the evening post here in swansea a good couple of times

1st one was back in 94, me and three of my friends had our picture taken with the journalist doing the article about our school kitchen getting refurmished. lying bitch said that i liked the food.

2nd time was about 4 or 5 years ago when the comprehensive i was in (all boys school) had an show of all the work that some of pupils have done. i was helping putting stuff around the hall when the photographer there took some pictures of us, didn't think it was a big deal until i realised that the reason i was there helping in the fucking first place was because i got caught skiving off lessons the previous day.

3rd time was last year for my 18th birthday when my mam had a birthday greeting put in with two pictures of me (one as a baby and one now). but the stupid twats put the wrong fucking baby picture in, turned out they put a picture of my brother in (who was with me in the pic) funny enough he works for them now!!
(Claude Speed was a Roman called Claudius Speedicus, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:18, Reply)

Bitter.
I nearly died of pneumonia.

The Dallas Morning News ran a story in the local section for Plano (where the hospital I was at is located) about asthmatic kids, and I was on the front page of it.

With my recently-permed mop making me look like the Bride-of-Frankenstein-hooked-up-to-breathing-apparatus

It got posted on every billboard at my school...
(Ecclesia, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:06, Reply)

Cop licker
The NZ Heald was doing some kind of article on the inner city constabulary, and as I stumbled out of the beerfest with friends to look for a bar I saw two of them posing for a photograph. The next day on page two you can see me behind the cops, off my tits, pretending to lick one of them.
(winestain, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 22:02, Reply)

Ooh twice!
The first time I was in the paper I was in the Craven Herald (the local for Skipton), my mum was doing the craft fair in the town hall there, i went to try the raffle in one of the other rooms.

I bought a ticket, and I lost... but wait! What's this, a smiley gentleman comes over and passes me a toy and tells me to hold it and the ticket to the camera. Jolly grinning me, aged oooh.. 5? Thinking I'd won, face put in the paper with my name spelled wrong (ITS SEAN, NOT SHAUN). Shortly after, asking if I could keep the teddy and having it cruelly taken away from me.

Bastards.

Second time, there was a community project thing called Lifestyle back in about 98ish 9with prizes for the best projects) We renovated a large area of wasteland into pretty gardens (big titchmarsh-whupping project) and got our pics taken with worktools etc way before the thing was finished
Cue a molestely pixellated photo of me and my friends, looking somewhat mutated, grinning inanely in front of what was basically a field with nothing in it.

We lost to a bunch of girls who did a play.

Not in the least bit bitter, not in the least bit bothered about the size of this post.
( MCQ Cartoons n' shit: bagowank.com, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 21:58, Reply)

I starred in the real estate section! 14 min 57 sec of fame to go.
When the neighbour's house went on the market, the picture they printed included me and the neighbour's kid squirting water guns at each other. I don't know how that affected property prices.
(cox2inhibitor, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 21:46, Reply)

i managed to blag my way into the local rag at the tender age of 3 days old
the reason? i was born on february 29th, and was the oldest of the 10 kids born at the local hospital on that day.

still, i made the front page. no, seriously.
( lo, the Greebo Warrior - Est. 2002, Thu 10 Feb 2005, 21:41, Reply)