What the papers say..............

I might have got that elusive knighthood if I had taken life more seriously but I could rarely resist the temptation to exploit the funny side of things.

When I was assisting Mugabe to start his reign of terror in Zimbabwe in 1980, I had to visit remote polling stations by light aircraft or helicopter. On one trip up to the Zambezi valley, we took with us a couple of Commonwealth Monitoring Force officers from Papua New Guinea. They were squat, fat ugly little blokes whom we dubbed ‘Fred and Barney’.

We flew for a long time on a single fuel tank so that we could run it dry and fill it completely at our next stop at a bush airstrip. As we got to the last drop the pilot winked at me, said nothing to the passengers, and let the donkey stop. There was a pregnant silence and then some agitated chattering behind us, before we re-started the engine. But we were not finished with our cruel deception. I flew the aircraft most of the way back to base, and as I started the approach to land the pilot folded his arms, turned around in his seat and engaged the couple in conversation. As it appeared that nobody was landing the plane, to say that this caused consternation would be a massive understatement. But as they were senior officers, we thought that some mild-Mickey taking would be in order!

Sorting out my archives the other day I went to a 30-year old Filofax (remember those? Very 1980s but the word is not now even in the spellchecker). I used to note down stuff from the papers that had escaped the sub-editor. Here are some samples.

‘The most frightening factor about AIDS is that it can be spread by normal sex between men and women. This is still rare in Scotland’.

Scottish Sunday Mail.

The above came when the government and the media were predicting that we were all doomed and that there would be an HIV death in every fourth family by the end of the 80’s. How they love to worry us the better to control us.

‘A Wales vs. England drinking contest was called off when the Welsh team turned up drunk and were forced to withdraw’.

Western Daily Mail.

‘Gommes dismissed four men for boiling their underpants in the tea urn.

Wycombe Midweek.

‘A sheep wearing a hat was one of four occupants taken into custody by the Narcotics Bureau near Port Elisabeth’.

The Citizen.

‘Wanted: four drivers immediately. Zimbabwean passports essential but not necessary’.

Zimbabwe Herald.

‘Labour Councillors believe that including formal qualifications in adverts discriminates against job applicants what done badly at school’.

Reading Chronicle. (I reckon the sub was having a larf on that one!).

‘The Court of Appeal has overturned Raymond Mohl’s drunk driving conviction on the grounds that he was too drunk to understand when the police told him he had a right to a lawyer’.

Ottawa Citizen.