"This Life" (mid-week laughs)

• Wince of the week: A young sunbather who had been sleeping on a beach in shallow waters woke up to find a barnacle stuck to his penis. The 23-year-old man arrived at a hospital in Bor, Yugoslavia, after failing to dislodge the clinging barnacle, reports the Glas Javnosti newspaper. The barnacle also defied a nurse armed with tweezers until it eventually fell off.
• Loophole of the week: Motorist Eddie Mitchell is challenging a parking fine after discovering that traffic wardens must be wearing full uniform when issuing tickets. The warden who booked him for parking on double yellow lines in Brighton was not wearing a cap. A spokesman for Brighton and Hove council confirmed: "Wardens must be in a proper uniform when they issue tickets. That includes a hat on their head."
• Political problem of the week: An artist who put a curse on a town's sewer system has offered to lift it if the city apologies. Adam Fortunate Eagel Nordwall cursed Livermore, California, in the 1970s after he claimed officials mistreated the 20ft totem pole he donated. A week after the curse, the city's sewer system failed. Mayor Marshall Kamena is backing Nordwall's demand for a public ceremony. "I'd rather not mess with something I don't understand," he said.
• Travelers of the week: A British couple who booked tickets to Sydney over the internet didn't pay quite enough attentionto details of their flight and landed in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Raeoul Sebastian and Emma Nunn did not even realise their mistake when they landed at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and were transferred to a 25-seat propeller plane bound for the largest town on Cape Breton Island. One Halifax resident described Sydney as : "Probably one of the last places in Canada that you would go to." The couple, both 19 from Sidcup, plan to consult a travel agent when they return home.
• Motoring offense of the week: Canadian police have stopped a car on suspicion that the driver was distracted: he was having sex with his passenger. Senior constable Norm Galestzoski, who pulled the vehicle over near Barrie, Ontario, reported : "The female passenger was completely nude and the male driver was also in a state of undress. Both occupants were engaged in activities other than that normally expected of persons driving in an automobile." A 31-year-old man has been charged with driving without a licence. His 25-year-old passenger has been charged with allowing herself to be driven by a non-licensed driver.
• Romantic of the week: A 40-year-old accountant has been crowned King of the Cuckolds in front of a 5,000-strong audience after telling how his wife liked to have extramarital sex once a week. The accountant, known only as Onorato C of Rome,was judged to have the sorriest tale of the 1,000 men who told their stories to judges over two days at a festival in Roccagorga, Italy. "I have never cheated on my wife, but I know she does," he says. "Having said that, my marriage is all right and I'm enjoying myself quite a lot." The contest has been revived after being abandoned in 1962 when the year's Cukold King took offence and pulled out a gun, firing two shots above the crowd before being arrested.