Well, it’s 5 November, so obviously it’s time for the people of Ottery St Mary in Devon to… er, carry flaming barrels of tar through the town on their shoulders, in ever-increasing sizes. I’m sure that’s fine.
There’s more about this unhinged tradition — which may have begun as some kind of pagan ceremony to cleanse the small East Devon town of evil spirits — on the (well, of course) entire website dedicated to the occasion:
In the same county, a few miles west, in the much more normal village of Shebbear, they will be saving the country, perhaps the world, from misfortune by… er, turning over a big stone that was left there by Satan.
To be fair to Beelzebub, Lord of Darkness, he didn’t put it there himself. The archangel Michael threw the stone at him, trapping him under it, after throwing him out of heaven. No, it’s not just a glacial erratic (big stone brought from somewhere else by glaciation). OBVIOUSLY.
And, finally… apparently, it’s the 43rd anniversary of Spike Milligan going on Parkinson and telling this extraordinary anecdote (to, among other people, James Coburn) about his friend Jack Hobbs getting the shits:
He also told it (with an extra payoff at the end) in Joe McGrath and David Bradbury’s excellent book Now That’s Funny:
…a book which is also the source of the Finest Comedy Writer’s Anecdote Ever Told:
