By Jo Finzi
This month’s whackiest story has to be the case of the office chair, set alight somewhere in the north of England.
The Times even saw fit to apologise to its readers for its lack of coverage of this earth shattering event, then devoted an entire page to it. We feel we now owe it to readers on this side of the globe to keep them up to date. So here it is, hot from the press of the Cumbria’s Westmorland Gazette.
"An office chair was destroyed after it was set on fire on the grassy area off Maude Street, Kendal, this afternoon. Fire crews from Kendal attended along with police. A spokesman for the fire and rescue service said: ‘A deliquent set fire to an office chair in the middle of a grassy area and it was extinguished using one hose jet’.”
That’s the whole story.... no deaths, no bird flu implications, no conspiracy theories… just a burnt chair.
But the story certainly didn’t end there. It sparked a record number of responses on the Gazette’s website, then it went global. The comments started in a fairly normal fashion - “I think it’s high time the Westmorland Gazette had something newsworthy to print; perhaps a drowned shopping trolley or a discarded mint cake”
Then things really started to hot up. “The chair knew the risks. Gang warfare in Kendal is rife, and when you choose a side you gotta be down with the risks. This was a declaration by the Standard Lamp Posse of Kendal. No-one messes with lamps” said a Lancastrian.
“The relatives of the chair are claiming it was ‘friendly fire’ and are asking the US Air force to release their cockpit video evidence” came from Brian Newbold in Doncaster.
“Was there a racial element to this unprovoked attack? Did this chair have the right to work in this country or was it an illegal immigrant? I think there needs to be some sort of investigation into the wider implications of this attack” added a Cheshire reader.
It even drew comment from Ben Thomas in Dubai - “This story has upset me so much I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight - I work with office chairs very closely on a daily basis and they’ve always treated me well and to hear stories like this makes me sick to my stomach.”
Andrew Daniels, the young journalist responsible for the chair scoop was not to be kept down “It takes years of experience to generate so much interest in what at first seemed an innocuous story” he posted.
There could yet be a follow up. “What has happened to the chair’s charred remains” asks the Times. Watch this space, and careful where you sit. We hear that chairs have a habit of getting their revenge.
Click here for the original story and to read all the readers’ comments
