I love stories

The land was rubbish and nothing grew on it and all the sheep got foot-rot and died, so he leased this land back to the church for 100 years, after which time it would revert to our family including any buildings that may have been built on it in the intervening time. He came home to Wales and died shortly afterwards. Techically this land still belongs to my family, though the details of it all keep being contested and nobody wants to give it back to us for some reason.

Where is it? It's the bit you now call Wall Street and Broadway.

Squirrel in attic makes cop jump, dropping flashlight onto homeowner's nose and breaking it, blood everywhere, cop falls on partner and pancakes him, squirrel escapes into living room under sofa. As they try to get squirrel out from under sofa into a box, squirrel runs into fireplace, runs out of fireplace back under sofa, sets sofa aflame, cops put out sofa fire with silk pillows while smoke alarms go off and homeowner bleeds all over new carpet.

All in about five minutes. Quality. Squirrel burned to death, though.

Do you remember any more details, I'm hoping the audio is archived on

http://www.npr.org/ ???

CJ that is indeed an amazing story. Sue the bastards!

Here's a transcript of one of the newspaper articles I have on the subject :

A 17th-century buccaneer reputedly given a large chunk of New York, including what is now Wall Street, has inspired one of the world’s biggest ever property claims.

A New York court is hearing evidence backing the descendants of Welshman Robert Edwards, who are claiming about $680bn (£414bn) of New York real estate in a dispute that dates back 300 years. They believe they are the legal owners of 77 acres of what is now Manhattan, an area which includes Broadway and Wall Street.

Their claim dates to the reign of Queen Anne. Edwards is said to have received a parcel of land as a reward for raiding Spanish galleons loaded down with treasure from the New World, though researchers believe he may actually have had a more mundane existence as an officer in the Royal Navy.

Legend and fact are difficult to separate in the life and times of Robert Edwards. He is believed to have been born in Llanymynech (now in Shropshire) and is thought to have arrived in New York in the late 1690s. His descendants believe he was given 77 acres of prime land by the British Crown. They say he -- or his son -- leased this land in 1778 to churchwardens of Trinity Church, now a substantial real estate owner in New York. At the end of the 99-year lease, the land was supposed to return to Edwards’ six brothers and sisters or their descendants -- but this failed to happen.

“This is one of the last great mysteries of this century,” said Philip Berrill, an author and broadcaster who is researching the history of the Edwards heirs. “It’s like a 10,000-piece jigsaw with little bits put into place as I go along.”

Until now Trinity Church which disputes the claims of Edwards’ heirs, has relied on the statute of limitations, which means that a claim must be made within 15 years of the start of the dispute. But the heirs of Robert Edwards would be able to overturn the statute if they can demonstrate that there was an error in the way in which the leases were handed over.

“Trinity Church is an honourable body but in the late 1600s and early 1700s the land grants in New York were in a total mess,” said Mr Berrill. “The governor of New York, Colonel Fletcher, got wind that he was about to be sacked and so gave away every inch of New York he could lay his hands on. One of the groups to get some land was Trinity Church but an Act of Parliament revoked his deals.

“In 1702 Lord Cornbury, Queen Anne’s cousin, was made governor and gave the church some more land. But he had a penchant for dressing up in his wife’s clothes and was allegedly arrested for posing as a prostitute on Broadway.”

The confusion surrounding the circumstances under which the church was given the land has fuelled the hopes of thousands of Edwards’ descendants. “At no time has one single shred of evidence relating to the original deeds granted to the church been tested in a US court of law,” said Mr Berrill.

The case deals with an alleged fraud in which descendants of Edwards are said to have lost millions of pounds from their fighting fund. It is not the first time they have been defrauded and lawyers will argue that the only way to avoid future fraud is to hold a full investigation into the legitimacy of their claims.

The lawyers will use the hearing to bring forward new evidence uncovered in New York and the Public Record Office at Kew proving that a man called Robert Edwards actually existed and owned land in New York in the late 1690s. Up until now, Trinity Church has argued that Edwards never existed.

“This will really give us a lever to set up an official investigation,” said Mr Berrill. “We now have evidence that Robert Edwards really existed at the right place, at the right time and paid taxes. There is no reason on earth why he shouldn’t have owned any land. In the past lawyers have said this could lead to business panic in New York.”

I rather like the thought that I could cause business panic in New York!

He stands up and looks me in the eye.

"Have a nice flight."

They knock at the door - the couple answer it and invite them in. As the two officers enter the house, a rather scruffy looking Alsation dog comes padding in behind them, wanders nonchalantly into the sitting room, and lays down in front of the fire.

Throughout the time the Officers are taking details about the accident from this couple, the dog lies there farting loudly. The smell is becoming nauseating - but the couple just ignore it. The two policemen are trying hard to maintain composure, as they don't wish to offend the delightful old couple.

Just then, the dog stands up, walks over behind the television set, squats down and does an enormous and extremely smelly shit.

The couple don't so much as raise an eyebrow, and carry on as though everything is quite normal.

Paperwork completed, the Officers get up to leave, thanking the couple for their cooperation. As they reach the front door, the old lady calls after them "Don't forget to take your dog with you!"

The couple thought it belonged to the policemen. The coppers thought it belonged to the old couple. In fact, it was a passing stray.

(True story - I knew one of the policemen concerned!)

It's the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I'm home staying at my parents house in the burbs of Detroit, girlfriend is with her parents in Ohio. This was, er, 1995. REM is coming to town for the Monster tour and girlfriend is a big fan (I am too although I've moved on to much more important bands like Sonic Youth and Guided By Voices, heh). I'm working at a record store and manage to get us great tickets, tenth row, so girlfriend takes the train to visit me for the weekend.

The show itself was pretty good in a stadium rock sort of way that in my naievete I found really off-putting. Girlfriend and myself are driving home when I happen to mention that a friend of mine works at the posh hotel that REM is staying at, so we should drive to the hotel and see if they're there. There's a fair number of people outside the hotel and sure enough a couple big tour buses pull up. The band minus Stipe comes out and we get autographs and mingle in a very awkward sort of way (oh yeah, and Tim Meadows, who had just started Saturday Night Live, walked into the hotel too since I guess he was staying there... he looked kind of sad that no one knew who he was). Anyway, it was Stipe we all wanted, but alas a manager/security type person came out and said:

"I'm sorry but Michael is with a friend and probably won't be back here till very late, like 4 or 5. You're welcome to stay out here but it will be a while."

Girlfriend and myself decide to head back to my parents, which is only a couple minutes away from the hotel. In the car I get the idea that, since I know what room he's staying in (from the friend), we should write him a letter and invite him over for lunch the next day. So we proceed to write a letter, well I guess I do most of the work, that starts out with:

"Hi. You are a rock star. My name is Aaron."

We drive back to the hotel and I walk up to the concierge and say could I leave a letter for Michael Stipe in room number whatever. The concierge says, "I'm sorry, but the person staying in that room is [whatever name Stipe used when staying in hotels." So I explain to him that he's a touring musician and it would mean a lot to us if he could make sure that he got the letter. The concierge agrees. So me and my girlfriend drive home and go to sleep.

Next morning, around noon, the phone rings. I answer and, although in complete shock, I'm able to have a brief conversation with Michael Stipe who thanked me very much for the letter and the invitation to lunch but that he would be busy that day. I thank him and mumble some other stuff. Then I proceed to explain to girlfriend who it was.

Fast forward about a year later. Girlfriend and myself have broken up as she developed a terrible bipolar disorder and I got a bit depressed while at rural college in the middle of Ohio. I'm watching MTV at my parents and the new REM song is premiered. It's "EBow the Letter" and I realize immediately what it's about. "Boys and girls and all of them a little bit scary." Plus the fact that I had learned that the friend who Stipe was with was Patti Smith, who of course sang on the song. So, the letter in that song was written by none other than me (and my girlfriend).

So that's how I managed to inspire a pop tune. Next time I'll tell you about how I inspired most of the recent White Stripes catalog.

A male friend of mine recently came out. Along with this revelation, he also revealed that he had an identical twin brother who lives in far-away Australia (we're from Ireland, btw), called Tom, who he had met only once. He claimed that Tom now refused to talk to him because he had come out. "How terrible," we responded. So far, so believable.

Then, as he revealed more about his twin, holes started appearing in his story. My attention-starved chum said:

"You know when I was out the other night with you in town? That wasn't me, it was my twin brother. I showed him pictures of everyone, and told him who everyone was, and he passed himself off as me."

Hmmm...alarm bells started to ring here. Aside from his lack of an Aussie accent on the night in question, it did not seem likely that such a feat could be pulled off.

Then, he says to my girlfriend and her own twin sister:

"Have you two ever snogged each other?" They reply in the negative.
"Me and my twin have," he responds. This is greeted with stunned silence. A bizarre re-union for 2 long-lost brothers: first one pretends to be the other, then they snog each other. My doubts increased. Then he says...

"My twin brother is a model."

Gah! Lies! At this point I should point out that my friend is both small and (at the risk of sounding mean) very unattractive. My suspicions are confirmed.

He finally admitted defeat yesterday, admitting that Tom did not exist. He wouldn't admit that he made the story up, though. He claimed that he had been taken in by a look-alike, who pretended to be his twin. Hmmm...

Back when I first moved to Boston 6 years ago I needed to get a job to pay rent and what not. I went through a temp agency and got hooked up with an interview for a "phone company", in Cambridge. Of course I thought this was a major company or something. To make it short, I got the job. Had no clue what the actual phone company did, it wasn't a well known company.

So the day I started I find out that its a porno company. Ya know those 900 numbers in the back of porno mags or those ones they advertise on late night tv. Turns out this company ran a lot of them. I thought, well this is great to tell my parents. I'm in the industry. I wasn't an operator or anything, and no I didn't do the phone sex thing, I was mearly a collector. But we did work directly next to the operators. And yes, they were mostly unnatractive older women.

The best part of the job is when people would call into complain about charges on their bills(i once had a guy with a bill of $10000). What the company did was when someone called into one of these lines, the voice recording system would take a 30 second voice sample from the caller. name, and whatever else they wanted to say. So we'd get wives calling in saying that no one made calls on their phones. "Would you like to hear a voice clip mam?" They would agree, only to find out it was their husband calling a gay line. "I want you to do me in the ass!" Woman would cry and hang up. I mean that would be awful but some of these clips were hilarious. I still remember the best one. Guy singing in his best Marvin Gaye voice "Do you wanna riiiideeee...in the back seat of a Caddy...Chop it up with Big Daddy."

Just a real sketchy place. They did an expose on the place on 48 hours or one of those shows while I was there. They blurred my face out.

damn, that's a good claim to fame!

in australia we are mental and one of the most popular brands of cheese is called coon cheese (don't worry, it was named after its inventor mr. coon.)

so when holidaying in sri lanka my mum asked a black woman to take a photo of her next to some giant bamboo. when the woman said "say cheese!" mum without thinking said "coon!" - it was an awkward moment.

The advert featured the pictures of two young women wearing skimpy outfits (NB - do people use skimpy these days?) in a bid to entice the punters in and was shocked to recognise one of them as an ex-gf. Knowing full well that she didn't have a secret life as an outback fleshpot spot, he took the poster to show here when he got home.

Turns out that she'd been pictured in Mixmag when they visited the Student Union club, and these pictures had been placed on the interweb, where they had been copied and used on this flyer. Small world eh? Quite a scary one too. Luckily, I will never be used to advertise strip joints.

After the match, their Dad had managed to arrange a meeting with Damien Duff for them, so they go to the club restaurant or wherever. And so Duffer comes along and introduces himself to them all, the first thing my friend's brother says is "oh you have down syndrome too!"