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BBC Amazing tales from Planet Tabloid

This week in our regular update from the outer limits of the news agenda: the killer dubbed "Darren", the feline who took a flutter, and Prince Phillip's latest blunder. But first...

Burning issue of the week:

Question: It's judgement day for the final three contestants in the Big Brother house, and there's no escaping the debate over who will win the £70,000?

Answer: Well, it won't be Dean. It's shaping up to be a two-horse race between Helen and Brian, with rival redtops the Sun and the Mirror wading in to back the pretty-but-dim hairdresser and bouncy-but-equally-dim flight attendant respectively.

And will the victory of Charlotte "The Harlot" Hoborough in Survivor prove prescient for the housemates?

On Wednesday the married WPc won the £1m prize pool in the desert island gameshow, during which she found time for a fling with a fellow contestant.

If such frolics are indeed the way to reality TV glory, then surely Helen is tipped for the top, having come the closest to any of the finalists to, er, getting to know another contestant a little better. Not that she did, of course.

Dangerous animal tale #1

There's a giant killer catfish on the loose in the River Thames and it's not fussy about what it eats, shrieks the Sun.

Weighing in at 40lbs, the razor-toothed creature is being hunted by environment agency staff who fear it may develop a taste for pets, or even humans!

But how scary can it be? The five-foot-long fish has been dubbed Darren...

Dangerous animal tale #2

Warning! Don't let your cat anywhere near the phone. The Sun carries a cautionary tale headlined, "Drat! I've got a £180 phone bill off my cat."

The offending moggy rang a premium rate betting line after its owners had retired to their beds.

They only discovered the cat's crime five hours later upon waking to hear the 60p-a-minute line in full flow.

But surely it's a long shot for a cat to dial such a number? Turns out it was already programmed into the phone when they bought it.

"I don't even like a flutter," grumbles owner Barry Mortimer.

Not what it says on the box

A video shop owner in York has been fined £5,000 for renting out not-hard-enough porn.

Local trading standards officers brought the prosecution after complaints that the video, Confessions of a Sex Maniac, was too soft to be in the Hard Core section of the shop.

The owner had been charging a rental fee of £50 for a video which the magistrates judged pretty tame, according to Consumer Law Today.

It's a lost cause, lads

Monday saw the fans of Anna Kournikova sobbing into their beers at the news that she has secretly wed hunky Russian ice hockey player Sergei Fedorov.

But they all perked up come Tuesday, when the Express revealed that the bouncy blonde was still playing on the singles circuit.

The Star was positively overjoyed: "Panic over lads, Anna's still single."

Romantic or what!

It was love-all later in the week for two lovers in two cities - well, two hemispheres to be exact.

Lovesick Ian Johnstone, who's been working in Australia for six months, flew 12,000 miles home to propose to his girlfriend, Amy Dolby.

She, too, was pining to see her sweetheart - so jetted out for a surprise visit just as he was boarding a London-bound plane in Sydney.

The pair even missed each other in transit at Singapore, where their flights stopped at the same time.

Amy told the Daily Mail what happened when she finally phoned him as he sat waiting in her Yorkshire flat.

"He kept asking me when I was coming home because he had a surprise for me."

It's a surprise that will just have to wait until Christmas, when Ian plans to pop home again - with plenty of warning this time.

-- Anonymous, July 28, 2001


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