Top 10 silly stories of the year

While we pride ourselves on bringing you the latest hard-hitting drinks industry news, we also love a silly story at db to provide some comic relief.

This year we had a myriad of silly stories to choose from, from the New Zealander who was so drunk he forgot he sold his car, and an ancient rat being named after a Dorset pub landlord to police in Wyoming arresting a drunk time traveller from the year 2048.

Coincidentally, a large proportion of the stories involve pubs in one way or another.

We’ve rounded up our favourite 10 comic gems for the year, which we hope make you chortle. Merry Christmas from all at db.

Vegan drunk driver fined $1,000 over 200 chicken nuggets 

Just this month, a vegan drunk driver was fined AUS$1,000 after a bizarre incident in which he demanded 200 chicken nuggets from staff at a drive-thru, before adding 200 hash browns to his order.

Kole Olsen, 30, plead guilty to one count of drunk driving at Hornsby Local Court in Sydney, Australia, this week following the incident at a McDonald’s car park.

The court heard how Olsen had entered the drive thru after a night of drinking and promptly ordered 200 chicken nuggets. When staff explained his order wasn’t available, he yelled “I want my f****** nuggets”.

He then completed four laps of the drive-thru lane while honking his horn before ordering 200 hash browns instead. Staff obliged this request and charged him AUS$230 for the super-sized, carb heavy meal.

However on realising extent of the bounty of hash browns he had acquired, Olsen returned to the restaurant for a refund from staff, who by this point had locked themselves in the restaurant in fear for their safety.

Quickly forgetting what he ordered, he then asked to be reimbursed for 200 large fries and 200 Big Macs instead.

In one final twist, Olsen told the court he was in fact vegan. Olsen was fined $1,000, banned from driving for nine months and and sentenced to a one-year good behaviour bond.

Man so drunk he forgets he sold his own car

In September, a man in the town of Rotorua in New Zealand sold his car during an almighty binge in order to buy more booze but, in the morning, he forgot what he’d done and reported it stolen.

The man, who was not named, had been drinking but, finding himself short of money for another round, decided his best option was to sell his car for NZ$800 (£440) to the first person who’d agree.

He not only succeeded in his lunatic bid but was so drunk that, the next morning, he had no recollection of what he had done and, finding his car missing, reported it stolen.

Senior sergeant Dennis Murphy of the Rotorua police told the newspaper that the man came to report the vehicle as stolen and, shortly afterwards, the car itself reappeared.

Worried that the car had been sold so cheaply it might be stolen the new owner had the presence of mind to check the registration on CarJam – a website that allows users to check a registered vehicle’s history – and saw that it was indeed stolen; albeit not exactly.

Returning the car to the police the truth subsequently emerged and the pair were told to work it out between them.

Murphy commented that while the key message was still ‘don’t drink and drive’, “The lesson here is don’t drink and sell cars.”

Police arrests time traveller from 2048

In October, police officers in Casper, Wyoming, arrested a drunk man claiming to have time travelled from the year 2048 to warn of an impending alien invasion.

Bryant Johnson, of Casper, was was arrested on 2 October for public intoxication. Protesting his innocence, Bryant told police that he was in fact from the future and had travelled back in time to warn authorities that interstellar colonists would soon be making a course for earth.

Claiming he had insider knowledge of an imminent alien invasion set to take place next year, Johnson advised police to leave as soon as possible.

He then asked to speak to the “president” of the town, explaining that he wanted to help warn others of the extraterrestrials’ arrival.

Johnson explained that his ability to time travel was due to the fact that aliens had filled his body with alcohol and instructed him to stand on a giant pad.

However the device apparently sent Johnson to the wrong point in time, with the time traveller lamenting to police that he had intended to show up in 2018, not 2017, for reasons known only to him.

Landlord turns pub into gingerbread house

Earlier this month a UK landlord took the festive season to extremes, transforming his traditional Somerset pub into a sweet-laden gingerbread house for Christmas.

Mark Walton, landlord at the Queen Victoria Inn at Priddy, in Somerset, said he came up with the idea “over a drink with fellow nutters one January night”, as reported by the BBC.

The traditional pub, which dates back the late 1800s and boasts many of its original features, including flagstone flooring, huge fireplaces and beamed ceilings, has been covered with giant candy canes, sherbet, lollipops, liquorice allsorts and gingerbread men for the festive period.

Mr Walton said it took two local artists around three weeks to create the oversized sweets and treats that now cover the pub, which has been renamed, temporarily, as The Gingerbread Inn.

Known for getting into the festive spirit, last year the pub installed a 15ft “bottle tree” made out of 1,100 glass bottles wrapped in 300m (984ft) of fairy lights.

Drunk man tries to walk home from the pub – 45 miles away

At the beginning of the year an inebriated man, drinking in a pub in Lincoln decided to walk home after a night out – a distance of 45 miles.

After declining a taxi and taking off into the night, the man trudged up the A46 in near total darkness. He was in Lincoln celebrating a friend’s birthday on January 6, and lives in Grimsby.

A third of the way into his epic journey, a nearby garden must have looked very cosy as he took a pit stop and decided to sleep for a while.

When the owner found him, instead of calling the police they gave him a cup of tea and pointed him in the direction of the nearest bus stop, before sending him on his merry way.

The man’s mother, Sam Fox, has spoken out on Facebook in an attempt to find the good samaritan in order to thank them for helping her son.

Shortly after the incident, she wrote: “My son went drinking in Lincoln last night and at some point decided he would walk home…. we are in Grimsby!

“After a fair walk he decided in his drunken wisdom to have a little sleep in someone’s garden.

He was found by the owners of the property and rather than call the police or take matters into their own hands, they actually gave him a cup of tea and help to get home.

“He has no knowledge of who they were but thinks Faldingworth was the area he was in. I would just like to pass on my sincere gratitude to these people for their care for my son.

Hopefully he realises how stupid he has been and how the night could have ended up so differently, as it has for many others.

“Hopefully someone will know this family and pass on my thanks.”

Brewery turns disused warehouse into giant advent calendar

In December, a UK brewery took inspiration from the likes of Banksy by transforming a disused warehouse into a giant advent calendar.

Banks’s Brewery transformed a boarded-up building on a dual carriageway in Wolverhampton into a giant, 11-metre-tall advent calendar.

Each of the 25 windows on the old Brewbaker’s building in Willenhall Road reveals a  Christmas-themed graffiti design complete with tongue-in-cheek messages to ring in the festive season. It has been created by Martin Gillan at Big Al’s Creative Emporium.

The stunt is part of Banks’s ongoing ‘Tells It Like It Is’ campaign, which sees the Marston-owned brewery attempting to engage a younger audience with a marketing strategy more closely aligned with the craft beer sector.

Rogues banned from London pub to star in book

A rogues gallery of characters banned from the ‘Half Moon’ pub in south London, including ‘Fat Paul’, ‘Staring Pervert’ and ‘Flat Cap Coke Fiend’ are to be immortalised in a new book of short stories out next year.

Entitled Still Barred, the book is being published by Unbound and reached its funding target earlier this month.

It was inspired by a picture (left) that did the rounds on social media last year when singer songwriter Rumer tweeted a picture of those banned from the Herne Hill pub by order of the establishment.

And what a list it was. Jason, Adam the Deaf Guy, Miller, One Armed Keith, Mickey Two Suits, The Glaswegian, That Blonde B*itch, The Ginger Drunk Tw*at called Angus, Crazy Linda, Tall Chavvy Fighting Idiot of Old and more, 23 names that read “like a list of the drunk Avengers,” said GQ or the cast of a British gangster movie and dripping with literary potential.

The list was quickly spotted by Unbound’s co-founder and chief publishing officer, John Mitchinson, who put out a call for authors to write a short story based on the fictional exploits of each of the people named (though who knows what ‘The Glaswegian’ might have done in their time?).

The result is a 25 story anthology (including tales of the presumably long suffering landlord and the pub itself) which seek to imagine why ‘Short Young Balding Usually Nice Bloke with Beard’ was barred; why Keith (apparently misspelled ‘Kieth’ on the original list and kept that way) only had one arm; why Mickey had two suits and what Gus and his mate Mark did to get chucked out.

The book was effectively commissioned “in an afternoon”, according to Unbound.

Among the authors contributing to the anthology are BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Matthew Sweet, authors Nikesh Shukla (The Good Immigrant) and Lissa Evans (Their Finest) and Jason Heazley a co-writer of the Ladybird books for grown-ups.

The book has no exact release date as yet but it is hoped the launch party will be in the recently refurbished Half Moon – although whether any of the real life characters will be allowed back in isn’t known.

Ancient rat named after Dorset pub landlord

In November a recently discovered rodent that lived 145 million years ago, and is thought to be mankind’s oldest mammal ancestor, was named after a pub landlord.

The remains of the little nocturnal mammal, which lived 145million years ago, were excavated from the Jurassic Coast in Dorset by paleontologists from the University of Portsmouth, along with pub landlord Charlie Newman.

The fossil hunter is also the landlord of the Square and Compass pub in Worth Matravers, which is known for its micro fossil museum attached to the pub and was established by Newman.

The ancient rat, which lived 145 million years ago, has been named ‘Durlstotherim newmani’ after Newman.

According to scientists at the University of Portsmouth, the animal is the earliest in a line that eventually leads to humans, as well as branching off along the way to evolve into creatures as diverse as blue whales and pigmy shrews.

The new species was identified from a handful of fossilised teeth recovered from rocks exposed in cliffs near Swanage by Portsmouth University undergraduate Grant Smith earlier this year, and identified by Dr Steve Sweetman, a research fellow at the university.

“Grant was sifting through small samples of earliest Cretaceous rocks collected on the coast of Dorset as part of his undergraduate dissertation project in the hope of finding some interesting remains,” said Dr Sweetman.

“Quite unexpectedly he found not one but two quite remarkable teeth of a type never before seen from rocks of this age. I was asked to look at them and give an opinion and even at first glance my jaw dropped.

“The teeth are of a type so highly evolved that I realised straight away I was looking at remains of early Cretaceous mammals that more closely resembled those that lived during the latest Cretaceous some 60million years later in geological history.

“The specimen is named after a pub landlord because he is a keen amateur paleontologist and has a small museum in his pub. He helped us collect samples and was otherwise very helpful and hospitable.”

Mr Newman previously made headlines in 2015 when he built his own 12ft-high Stonehenge in a field he owns using 35 tonnes of timber, although he was later ordered to tear it down by Purbeck District Council.

The findings were published in the journal, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Wayward pirates scupper world record attempt

In August a world record attempt for the most pirates in one place failed after “a few” of the 14,000 swashbucklers that had gathered in Penzance accidentally stayed in a pub and missed the count.

The Cornish town won the Guinness World Record for the largest pirate gathering in 2011, stealing the title from Hastings, who won back the title in 2013. Since then, Penzance has been trying to reclaim the title.

Pubs in the area had promised to make sure pirates were out and in the count area by 3.45pm.

To succeed the town needed to have more than 14,231 pirates in one place by 4pm on Sunday. Each participant had to have at least two accessories, such as a sword or eye patch, to qualify as a pirate.

But come the count the 14,000-strong crew was not enough to beat the record, with organisers telling the crowd they were short by ‘”just a few”.

“We won’t say how many [were in the pub],” organiser Andy Hazlehurst told the crowd. “We won’t shame those who were down in the Dolphin and that but we still haven’t taught the people who go to the pub to get here on time.”

Speaking on Monday, Mayor of Penzance Dick Cliffe said: “It is a disappointment not to break the record and miss out by such a small amount… The pirates of Penzance is an expression everyone knows – not the pirates of Hastings. They are just impostors.”

He added: “I remember looking into the pub and seeing people in pirate outfits around the time the count was being done. I thought – what are they doing there?

“Whether it is missed communication over the importance of being in the compounds for just ten minutes I don’t know.

“But it is a tough thing to marshal that number of pirates – they are not a group that traditionally are easily marshalled by anybody.”

Aussie pub bars Danish prince for not having proper ID

In August, Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark was barred entry to a bar in Brisbane because the royal didn’t have proper identification.

Prince Frederik, 49, and his entourage were in Brisbane for a yachting regatta, but ran into trouble when they tried to enter a local bar without formal identification.

Queensland’s tough liquor laws require venues to scan the IDs of all patrons entering premises that sell alcohol after 10pm. The new rules, introduced in July, were put in place “to minimise the risk of alcohol-related harm”.

However apparently, no one told the Danish royal, or his team, about this requirement, with the Prince forced to call upon the help of diplomatic protection police officers to gain entry to the Jade Buddha bar in Brisbane.

The requirement to provide ID was in this case waived after civil servants gave permission to the bar to allow entry to the Prince.

The Brisbane Courier Mail described the incident as the latest “cringe inducing blunder” resulting from the new rules, which have seen backpackers, foreign tourists and business travellers caught out.

Speaking to the paper, Phil Hogan, co-owner of the Jade Buddha, said the new rules were “a nightmare”, and that foreign dignitaries should be exempted.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg with the prince. It’s happening all the time with normal people,” he said.

According to the paper, a group of 12 French winemakers without proper ID were turned away in July from The Gresham, one of Brisbane’s best-known bars.

On Tuesday, Queensland’s attorney general Yvette D’Ath said the case of the Danish Crown Prince showed that venues “applied the law equally”.

“The Prince obviously did not take great offence as he returned a short time later and was granted entry,” she said. “The fact is this has not caused a diplomatic incident as some would have you believe.”