You couldn’t make it up - it's the end of the Silly Season (From Bournemouth Echo)

You couldn’t make it up - it's the end of the Silly Season

9:20am Monday 30th August 2010 in

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IT KICKED off with a promising start in June, when 11 English millionaires swaggered off to South Africa, insisting they would win something called The World Cup.

It was hard to tell what was more lamentable, their performance or the excuses offered for it, but the event itself helped set the scene for the months to follow.

Annoying plasticky trumpety things called vuvuzelas swept the nation like a plague, sparking innumerable stories of how they would cause deafness, or be banned; by Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham and His Holiness Pope Benedict, who apparently doesn’t want to hear them when he comes visiting these shores next month. Or maybe they won’t be banned as the Premier League said they would “welcome” the instrument at matches.

Meanwhile, in an aquarium in Germany, an octopus called Paul was busy with the World Cup too, predicting who would win it. This time the silly people bet against the cephalopod – Paul scored seven correct predictions and correctly foresaw Spain would hoist the cup.

Paul wasn’t the only water creature to cause a stir.

Last weekend in France the beaches of Boulogne were evacuated after two men, described only as “Pierre and Laurent” claimed to have seen a 12-foot croc cruising the waters. As you do. The croc, not unsurprisingly, turned out to be a giant piece of driftwood. However, as a local councillor sniffed: “It’s easy to be clever with hindsight. It’s not every day you get a crocodile alert so we had to be careful.” Quite.

In Japan they showed off a ship designed to look like a giant zip, and in Manchester, after introducing a hosepipe ban because they claimed there was a drought, the authorities discreetly ended it after twigging their customers were more likely to be swept away by the ceaseless rains.

In China there were thrilling reports of a 60-mile traffic jam that rapidly grew to a 100km traffic jam that would take “weeks” to clear.

Unfortunately for hacks, once the Chinese realised their little local difficulty had become an international embarrassment, the authorities moved to clear it and according to reports, it disappeared in just one day… Add to this the “Charles Kennedy is joining the Labour Party” story (he isn’t); X-Factor’s Auto-Tunegate “scandal” (don’t panic, it’s over); and David Beckham’s Power Balance healing hologram wristband (it may not do what it says on the tin); and it makes you actually look forward to the party conferences, government policy announcements and Worthy Novel launches that make up what we have come to think of as the Really Sensible Season.