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EDINBURGH. When faced with a bewildering wine list and an incomprehensible sommelier, ordering the second cheapest bottle of wine on the menu is a “pretty reliable” way to choose a bottle of wine, a local man revealed today.

David Walsh, 26, made the statement while he and a group of old friends were struggling to decipher an inexplicably confusing wine list at a restaurant in the city last Sunday. “The second cheapest is usually the way to go”, Walsh explained. “It’s pretty reliable, and will usually get you something solid, albeit not spectacular. I mean, it just stands to reason: etiquette says you can’t order the absolute cheapest wine in a restaurant, but since you don’t understand anything about wine you don’t want to order anything too expensive. So just go for the second cheapest.”

When pressed further on the subject, Walsh did reveal, however, that the days of ordering the second cheapest bottle might be numbered. “I think ordering the second cheapest of anything is a pretty widespread practice”, Walsh said. “I’m pretty confident I didn’t event that. So you’ve got to ask yourself – do the restaurant owners know about the second cheapest too? If they do, they’ll make sure the second cheapest wine on the menu is something rubbish and overpriced, since people are going to order it anyway. Pretty soon we’ll need to start mixing things up, and go for maybe the second second cheapest, the second second second cheapest, or maybe even, in extreme cases, the cheapest.

“Basically, all wine tastes pretty similar”, Walsh concluded. “The game is basically to not look too tight, while at the same time not overpaying for something too expensive, since you probably won’t be able to taste the difference anyway.”

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LINCOLN. A local man today insisted to friends that popular music is in terminal decline, adding that most current popular music could be described as “just noise, really”. Craig Shearer, 47, from Horncastle, near Lincoln, made the somewhat predictable declaration over drinks with work colleagues in a local pub.

“Back in our day we had proper songwriting and people played real instruments”, Mr Shearer explained. “Nowadays computers are writing songs”.

When it was put to him by a junior colleague that basically every generation since the beginning of time has claimed the same thing, Shearer was unrepentant. “Our music was great”, Shearer responded. “Our parents just didn’t understand it.”. Shearer also refuted the allegation that had basically become a bit like his parents, and wasn’t in touch with young people today. “I really am in touch with the kids”, he explained. “I watch X-Factor and everything.”

photo credit: legalnonresident

BIRMINGHAM. People making commitments to change their behaviour in the New Year should aim for trivially easy targets to increase their chance of success, a local taxi driver told relations today.

Peter Oldham, 48, was helping himself to an additional portion of parsnips during his families traditional New Year’s Day roast when he offered the unsolicited advice to a gathering of seven or eight relatives.

“These people want to bring about serious change in their lives, for example losing lots of weight, smoking less or giving up some kind of vice”, Mr Oldham explained. “Those kind of resolutions actually require a bit of effort and that’s why people fail. They should aim for things they might actually be able to pull off, like giving up some food they don’t like.”

The opinion appears to have been prompted by Auntie Doris’ earlier revelation that she planned to quit smoking for the New Year; the eleventh time she has made the same commitment, so far without success.

Mr Oldham went on to explain how people could fool friends and loved ones using his concept of “resolution offseting”. “Basically, what you do is you pair up something you’re not supposed to do with something you want to do more of”, Mr Oldham explained. “For example, if your missus wants you to watch TV, tell her you’ve made a resolution to watch less TV. Then whenever she has a pop at you for watching too much TV, you get up and go the pub. You don’t break your resolution, and you get to go the the pub. It’s a win win.”

photo credit: Thomas Hawk

BRIXTON. An office worker today celebrated on the inside after overtaking eight fellow cyclists on a busy uphill road in South London. Tom Johnson, 32, was the first of the group of eight unconnected commuters to reach the top of Brixton Hill, and revealed that while it may have looked easy, a lot of effort was involved.

“My heart was beating pretty hard, but it’s important to look relaxed when you overtake people,” Johnson explained. ” You can’t let them know that you’re racing them. But everybody races sometimes.”

Johnson’s victory was all the more impressive given the calibre of the opposition, which included a woman on a shopping bike, a couple of teenagers, and a guy wearing lycra riding what looked like an a pretty expensive road bike. “It was particularly sweet to beat that guy”, Johnson added. “He looks pretty fast but he made a right mess of the traffic lights, and that cost him dear”.

credit: Darwin Bell

LONDON. The avocado has continued its unwarranted advance on dinnerplates across the globe, new research published today has revealed.

The squishy, tastless fruit has long been a staple of guacamole and bland salads but has recently also been making significant advances in side-salads, sandwiches and burgers.

“The rise in unneccessary avocado consumption has really been quite alarming”, explained Sarah Berry, Professor of Fruit at the University of Shropshire. “The number of meals with avocado in has been increasing year on year, far above the rate that we would expect for such a crappy and pointless fruit.”

Professor Berry’s research also indicated that more and more people are admitting that they like avocado: a dangerous development that Berry reads as a sign that the subversive tactics of the avocado are starting to have an effect on the population at large.

“The campaign the avocado is fighting is a smart and effective one”, Berry explained. “One day avocados will be in every meal, and people will be asking – ‘how did this happen? – but by then it will be too late.”

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SHROPSHIRE. The sell-by dates on food products can be safely extended by around two weeks, a student claimed today. Liam Madden, 20, who is studying Astrophysics with Golf Course Management at the University of Shropshire, insisted that the suggested dates were “proper cautious” and that other factors could be used to determine food edibility.

“Those dates really don’t mean anything”, Madden explained to flatmates earlier today, while tucking into a sandwich of week old bacon on two-week old bread, topped off with two-year old ketchup. “They’re just being proper cautious because they can’t cut it fine. In reality, you can just add a couple of weeks on and you’ll probably be fine. Sometimes more than that, sometimes less. It’s a judgement call.”

When challenged by disgusted flatmate Anna Jones, 19, if he was then simply planning to leave food festering in the fridge forever, Madden suggested that other proofing methods can be employed to determine if food is safe to eat. “Furriness is the obvious one”, Madden explained. “Most food that doesn’t start out furry shouldn’t become furry with time. Watch out too for things that randomly change colour, texture, start soft and get hard, start hard and get soft, or just generally smell unpleasant. ”

Madden did concede, however, that some food simply has to be thrown away. “Even in these tough economic times, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It’s up to each man to determine where that line is for himself.”

MANCHESTER. A bored office worker today set a new timewasting record after he read 231 articles on Wikipedia in one eight hour working day. Tom Marsh, 26, estimates the feat took in the region of six and a half hours, and smashed his own record of 157 pages, set last November.

“The key to wasting that amount of time is to not be afraid of just reading about things you actually aren’t that interested in,” Marsh explained. “Just start with something you have a passing interest in, and then take something related to that, and then something related to that, and so on, and so on – until you’re reading about the Scandanavian Welface Model and you can’t remember why.”

In addition to his new found knowledge on Nordic social policy, Marsh covered a wide variety of subjects including German Bobsledder Andre Lange, the 1958 Fifa World Cup, Cumbia Villera music and the late Lithuanian–American tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis.

“Gerulatis was actually where the whole thing started”, said Marsh. “I was supposed to be balancing some figures on a spreadsheet, then out of nowhere I just had to know who said that quote about not letting anyone beat him 17 times in a row.”

When challenged today on the ethics of his timewasting, Marsh was defiantly unrepentant. “If my bosses didn’t want me to waste time on Wikipedia, they would give me more to do”, he explained. “I complete the work I’m tasked with to an average standard, never more than a week or two after the deadline, and you can’t ask for more than that.”

While Marsh’s grasp of pointless trivia is now unrivalled within the office, Marsh admits he is unable to reveal much of his new knowledge to his colleagues, for fear his timewasting would be discovered and curtailed. “It’s a shame”, Marsh said. “When you learn a new fact, you just want to tell someone. Occasionally I can’t control the urge to tell someone a fact, and when that happens, I usually pretend I heard it on a documentary.”

“It stands to reason, when you think about it”, explained Dr. Nero Sparboom, Professor of Linguistics at Shropshire, who has spent the last ten years studying what people say right after they say I’m not racist, but. “You don’t often hear people say ‘I’m not racist, but I’m just off to the shops to get a pint of milk’. There’s really no need to qualify your lack of racism there. Compare that with‘I’m not racist, but the bloody foreigners are ruining this country’ – clearly a more appropriate use of the phrase, as it helps to deflect the subsequent casual racism.”

The new research will certainly be a blow to casual racists across the country, who had until now been successfully disguising their intolerant xenophonic opinions with the simple four word phrase. “It’s getting harder to be a little bit racist without anyone noticing”, said Bob, 48, a simple minded bigot from Surrey. “I’m thinking of starting more sentences with ‘you people’ or ‘the trouble with this country is’ instead.”

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LONDON. A valiant but short lived attempt to save money and eat more healthily came to an end today when a local man officially ended his stint of preparing healthy lunches, returning instead to his customary ritual of selecting a packaged sandwich at random from the supermarket across the street from his office.

John Lahm, 27, from East Dulwich, South London, made the dramatic U-Turn only five days after telling friends and colleagues that he was going to make nutritious packed lunches “every day from now on”. While the extract reason for the humilating climbdown is still shrouded in mystery, sources closes to Lahm suggest that that laziness, a lack of inspiration, an absence of good ingredients in the house and a stonking hangover may all contributed to his decision.

“He was really into it at first”, Lahm’s girlfriend Rachel Jones, 24, said today. “He made really nice sandwiches for himself, and one day he even cooked a whole meal the night before work and took it into work to microwave the next day. I just don’t know what happened”.

Critics of Mr. Lahm point out that this is not the first time he has failed to deliver on a promise made to himself – in fact his plans to “learn Mandarin”, “really get fit” and “find my true vocation” all met with a similar fate.