We emerge in the early-morning light to find some spectacular sights, including Mark Webber's unusual Friday commute. Join us for this and the weirder standout stories of the week…
Fair and square
If you emerge bleary-eyed from an underground railway station at 6am on a summer’s morning, the last thing you expect to see is a Formula One grand prix winner racing past you in one of a capital city’s most iconic locations, but that’s precisely what met flabbergasted London commuters in Westminster today, who witnessed Red Bull Racing’s Mark Webber touring the UK capital’s Parliament Square and a full team of mechanics performing several pitstops on his Red Bull F1 car in the shadow of the world’s oldest seat of government. Whether Mark paid the infamous ‘congestion charge’ payable by motorists entering the city centre’s roads, we have no idea, but luckily someone caught the early-morning action, which you can see below, and you can click here for some reaction from the man himself.
X-ray-ted
Quite often these days in the era of the ‘size zero’ model, people look at a photo and think, “Yes, she’s sexy, but perhaps she’s a bit too bony.” Well, Eizo, a German company, have taken that a bit further with a new series of sexy poses purportedly of a lady who’s naked but for a pair of high heels – so far, so Playboy – but there’s absolutely no flesh on offer, just her profile in X-ray. Though the photos, developed by agency Butter to advertise Eizo’s medical equipment, are actually clever fakery, they’ve become an instant viral hit for their oddity value. See below. Weird, eh?
Clothes (malfunction) of office
From one lightweight model to someone trying to shed the kilos, but in more embarrassing and much less sexy circumstances. Just eight weeks into his job as Lord Mayor of Leicester, a city in the English Midlands, Colin Hall was attending a function at a local library when his trousers suddenly fell down as he stood to give a vote of thanks, revealing the hapless mayor’s underpants. All this would be bad enough, but the event was for local schoolkids. "Unfortunately, I had chosen not to wear a belt and the trousers came loose and fell,” said the 46-year-old, 16st (that’s 225lbs or a fairly substantial 100kg) councillor, who is trying to lose weight during his time in office. "I would like to offer my deepest apologies to anyone who was offended by the accident." Far from the youngsters being offended, from our memory of watching slapstick kids’ TV, it’ll be a huge joke in Leicester playgrounds for weeks, if not months.
Life in the Fast Lane
More fun for subway travellers now, and another chance to lose your trousers (at least, if you do this head first and have forgotten your belt). Carmakers Volkswagen have, for no better reason than to make life a little more interesting for Berlin’s commuters, installed a large red slide at the Alexanderplatz U-Bahn station in the German capital. No need to risk running for a train down slippery steps or holding onto handrails, just use the ‘Fast Lane’. Watch the slide in action above.
Jim Bahn/plinkk
Ship and bottle
We’ve all done it. You park your 150,000-tonne, 400m container ship for five minutes while you pop into the shops for a pint of milk, and when you come out it’s been impounded by some cowboy firm. Actually, the truth of this story is barely less strange. Already having been a law student, creative writing student, English teacher, music teacher, oil worker, aeroplane pilot and ship’s captain, Max Hardberger turned his hand to being a repo man with a difference in 1990. The 61-year-old now steals his way secretly into ports and ‘repossesses’ ships that have been illegally kept in dock from under the noses of the rogue authorities holding them, then returns them to their owners. The American has now written his remarkable and colourful life story, Seized, published this week. As if all this weren’t enough, the guy writes ‘gritty’ fiction, too. The truth, as the saying goes, is surely stranger!
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