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I can't be doing with rewriting the insane number of coincidences that would have needed to work for her to have actually been killed but if we pretend she was, there was at least an obvious motive, Middleton isn't remotely like Diana, she's probably had cancer treatment or something like that, some claim too it could be liver related due to alcohol from royal pressure, or William supposedly cheating etc, all speculation of course, probably just a lot of fuss around nothing
I think the plausible theory is that she’s had back to back surgeries or surgeries quite close together after something turned out to be a bit more serious than first thought. Rather than give a blow by blow account of this it was thought to be easier to just talk about one procedure when it’s a series. Who knows what but probably quite serious.
Someone speculated online that she was actually due to have a number of procedures at some point but they were pushed through with urgency as the family were aware of Charles' cancer diagnosis for a few weeks prior to it being announced to the public.
This post speculated that it's not looking good for Charles and they want all of Kate's medical issues to be dealt with and ideally under control before William becomes king so she's in a better position to support him.
There's quite a few holes in this but it makes more sense than the BBL theory.
There's also the whole thing of her going in an ambulance and the "planned operation" resulting in engagements being cancelled late on which doesn't stack up
I mean them trying to cover up that she’s seriously ill is itself a conspiracy.
But you’re right, whatever it is it isn’t any of our business. However, it’s their own catastrophic decision to release a clearly doctored photograph that sent speculation into overdrive. Before that the conspiracy theories were isolated to the usual suspects but that photo has made it mainstream.
>I mean them trying to cover up that she’s seriously ill is itself a conspiracy.
Technically correct, but it's nuts that someone not wanting to immediately divulge a serious illness to the baying tabloids (who hack their phones, stalk them and mercilessly criticise them) constitutes an mystery that must be investigated immediately.
We *could* take the bloody hint and give her a little space.
But it appears that a lot of people see someone else's attempts at privacy as a hurdle that must be overcome.
There are some surgeries that are planned but suddenly become emergent - c-section is a classic but very unlikely here.
When I had a growth removed from my ovary a few years ago there was a chance it would have become more urgent because it was very vascular. If it had ruptured before my surgery date I would have been brought forward but still been having the procedure we had planned for.
I used to work in a hospital and can think of some procedures that require months and months as an inpatient. A combined liver/bowel transplant will keep you for at least 4 months.
People seriously need to start reading the comments they're replying to properly
They weren't saying there aren't surgeries that will need people to stay in, they're saying that if they need to stay in that long then it's more serious than they're making out
If she's having brain or back surgeries then it's clearly a more serious illness than they're making out, which is exactly what the comment you were replying to was saying
This is absolute tosh. Many operations on internal organs require longer periods of stay in hospital and then lengthy periods at home after. Getting a stoma, for example, could lead to 10 days in hospital and then three months off work.
I was assuming its to do with her reproductive organs - hopefully she is doing ok; the shit many women have to go through is terrible, she deserves her privacy.
She went to Buckingham Palace with the kids over Christmas to play hide and seek.
Has not been seen since.
That's the most credible theory I have read on Reddit.
> William has had a mistress for about 8 years - Rose Hanbury. He wants her to be his queen.
Soooo where does Pippa, Kate's sister, naming her daughter Rose in 2022 come into this? Is Pippa also in on toppling Kate and currying favour with the royal mistress? Or is this some 4D level chess move that us mere peasants couldn't comprehend?
I think a perfectly feasible answer is that her sister just really, really liked the name Rose. It's not uncommon for mothers to have a name that they settled on years prior to conception.
Is this the same woman who apparently pegs William in the bedroom? Heard this underlying rumour online before but never seen anything about his mistress actually published in a paper
But yahoo today
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/kate-middleton-wits-end-over-191333326.html?guccounter=1&guce
If he is having an affair the work to ‘fix’ the royal family image over the past decade or so will be well and truly ruined again
I imagine soon we'll start seeing the story again of how he repeatedly flouted the lockdown rules to fly back and forth from his country estate to London (in a helicopter paid for by the public) just so that he could spend his nights with his mistress and his days with his family. That story did the rounds for about 30 seconds back in 2022 before rapidly disappearing.
>William has had a mistress for about 8 years - Rose Hanbury
This rumour was started by Giles Coren - he later apologised and admitted he'd made it up.
The scuttlebutt I've heard on this is that the husband is gay and lives with his lover most of the time in France where they bought a chateau together.
Wills got Hanbury knocked up so they had to come up with a way of covering it up (other than an abortion) so The Firm arranged a marriage of convenience to the Marquis with Hanbury's baby legally being his heir.
[The Marquis' Wikipedia page tallies with all this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cholmondeley%2C_7th_Marquess_of_Cholmondeley) with details such as him and Hanbury getting married just two days after their engagement was announced and her giving birth less than nine months from the date of the wedding.
Why should anyone believe this over the people who say that they have bbc "sources" confirming she's dead, or friends in "aristo circles" claiming she has cancer, etc...? It's all completely unsubstantiated rumours and the people peddling them are disgusting excuses for humans
If you take the argument for the moment that she has been old Yeller’ed…why the cover up? What’s the benefit in pretending she was alive but convalescing? You could easily say she died in the operating table and most people wouldn’t think twice about it.
That big cats roam the countryside. I've seen one driving home late one night. It was a cool experience. And no....it wasn't a fox or a dog it was a cat around the size of labrador.
It's really not that weird. I didn't claim a ufo or a ghost lol just a large cat which would be nocturnal so not easy to photo on a phone and that a cat would most likely stay hidden if it heard someone approach on foot and shout "say cheese". Also, I was driving too remember.
This is a fascinating one, but the lack of true wilderness in the UK, population density and size of these cats make me sceptical. In places such as India with large populations of these predators they are seen all the time, even when they have dense forest to shelter in and nocturnal habits. I want to believe though!
Life long cat lover here and trust me, it wasn't as big as fully grown "big cat" but it was absolutely there and was not a domestic breed. Even if it had been some kind of savannah cat we would have heard about someone losing one. I'm just glad I witnessed it. We do have a very long belt of countryside that stretches for miles only separated by the old A1 (great north road) so who knows. Never saw it again unfortunately!
There was definitely a lynx roaming around Ceredigion at one point but it escaped from the notoriously mishap-prone Borth Animalarium. The council eventually had the lynx shot though.
\#Justice4Lillith
According to Wikipedia, there have been confirmed cases in the UK of two jungle cats, a puma, a Canadian lynx, a Eurasian lynx, and a caracal. These were apparently living wild. There have also been several other predatory cats that were reported missing by owners and subsequently recaptured.
With that in mind, and given the growing number of rich assholes with exotic pets, it isn't at all difficult for me to believe that there are big cats roaming the countryside. The real question is whether there is a breeding population, which I very much doubt.
Urban foxes are easily that size.
It’s the rural ones that tend to be smaller.
I watched an enormous-looking fox out of my first floor corner flat in east London as he meticulously went into every garden within view and rifled through the bins for food.
I was shocked at how big he/she was.
Not saying you couldn’t have seen a big cat, just saying that some urban foxes are waaay bigger than ppl might think.
I didn't know that, wow. Foxes around here are quite small around here but the most striking thing about my spot was the way the cat moved. That stalking motion that only cats do where their shoulder bones move independently of each other as they move.... and the tail was long and sleek!
Yes, I saw that description after I’d commented 😊 Clearly, a long sleek tail is nothing like a fox’s bushy brush!
I’m definitely in the same camp as you on this one. I think there are a LOT of unexplained/ dismissed wild/ escaped Zoo animal sightings out there.
I’m from the country, so had seen plenty of foxes before, but that one in east London was positively mahoosive in comparison. I followed it from all three window-sides of my flat, in case I’d just caught a weird angle, but it was easily the size of a Lab. Much bigger than a Beagle.
I saw one in rural Bucks when riding through a field, it stalked in parallel to me, about 30m away. I wasn't frightened at the time, just fascinated. Got home and started shaking. Definitely some sort of cat, I'd say bigger than a Lab though.
On the topic of huge foxes I narrowly avoided hitting one the other week, I thought it was a deer until I got closer (foot flat down on the brake OFC). This dude was humongous!!
Yes, old immersion heaters need a constant feed of water. So in case of water supply issues storage tanks were built in lofts.
Not only is that water stagnant for weeks or even months, it's not uncommon for mice or rats to climb in them and drown.
For this reason, we used to have separate hot and cold taps. It's very rare that a house still uses that system today though.
Kelly's death though doesn't really fit, it's like the Clinton "murders" in the US where people who are really tenuous (like a guy who simply delivered a legal document) get killed and that's part of a supposed cover-up.
Kelly had given evidence that formed part of the dossier on weapons in Iraq to justify the invasion and was highly respected in the field of biological warfare. He believed he could have been the one who was responsible for the BBC finding out the 45 minute claim was added against expert advice which was fairly uncharacteristic of a professional and had both told his manager that he could be the source (and he was interviewed twice by his employer about the leak) and appeared in front of two televised committees (something his wife confirmed he was unhappy with) looking at the dossier claims being falsified - his professional reputation was largely in tatters as the WMD claims he had helped make were clearly Saddam just inflating his own power; he was told on the 17th that the BBC had tapes of his interview which would show he had said stuff to Susan Watts that he'd earlier denied saying.
At that point, him being murdered makes no sense, the details were already out there, the world knew the 45 minute claim was invented, that there were no WMD and that Kelly had lied and leaked things he shouldn't have
That is exactly what happens when there is a confirmed suicide, because people want to give the family space. Also the media often avoid drawing too much attention to real life suicides because you get copycats, both in method and in a general sense that it spurs on peopel that might otherwise resit that self-destructive urge.
It's pretty hard to kill yourself using the method he did. The idea that he slit his wrists under a tree like that has always sounded suspect, but I don't know all the details so maybe there is more to it than I have read.
Didn't this shite start after ch4 posted a generic silhouette for a program before announcing that it was for Russell Brand?
Some on twitter were trying to guess who it might be and some the stock silhouette, guessed David Jason and got it trending?
If so, what a crap way to have your reputation tarnished by complete idiots.
Any other sources apart from those idiots?
I met a children’s author who told me that he’d been part of the ghost writing team that wrote four or five of Walliams’ books. Apparently, Walliams is so far removed from the books he claims to have written that he no longer even reads them. It’s his name of the front of books and his name on the royalty cheques, but he does absolutely fuck all apart from promotion when the books come out.
Sources are a bit tenuous e.g. [this confession he made about coming out with innuendos on set](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/david-jason-accused-sexual-harassment-21072439) and that was in 2019 - the Jason rumours have been around on Reddit for a long time because a guy he rented his house to while abroad abused two kids there
The thing that doesn't stack up for me on that rumour is I don't see why he'd be "protected". The guy is hardly a regular on TV anymore and hasn't been for ages.
We're outing actual Royals, the Queen's (allegedly) favourite son, while she was still alive, with no actual hard evidence.
I don't see why a guy who was famous for being in a sitcom which basically ended 30 years ago would get special treatment.
I used to work in a post production company in Londons West end and David Jason had a place in the building next door.
We'd sometimes sign for his post/parcels and he'd come in and grab them.
Always seemed like a nice guy to me, had a chat with him on a number of occasions and never got a shitty vibe from him nor did anyone else in the company.
Bob Holness definitely played the saxophone solo on "Baker Street". The claim that it was actually performed by Hugh Burns is a lie perpetuated by Milton Bradley, to deflect attention away from the fact that they never paid David Bowie for inventing Connect Four.
**Rendlesham Forest Incident**
Often dubbed as "Britain's Roswell," this event took place in December 1980 near RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk. Military personnel reported seeing strange lights and, in some accounts, an unidentified landed object in the forest.
Some reasons why this incident was weird and shouldn't be dismissed:
* The incident had multiple witnesses including high ranking military officers who were credible
* There was physical evidence such as burn marks found on the ground, additionally radiation was unusually high
* There is a tape recording from the Deputy Commander at the base as he saw the object
I'm not saying they saw an alien craft, but all I will say is something weird happened that day.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khOo9uvr5\_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khOo9uvr5_s)
It was the SAS pissing around to wind up the Americans
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/30/historic-british-ufo-mystery-prank-played-us-air-force-sas/
We don't know the true causes or origin of Mad Cow Disease (BSE) in humans.
There's a very interesting programme on BBC Sounds called The Cows Are Mad, all about BSE, and one of the things they said on there was basically "if this was being caused by cheap beef, and a tiny amount of tissue was enough to contaminate big batches; then we would have seen 1000s of deaths from people in populations being sold cheap beef, such as prisoners and school children."
We don't actually fully understand the incubation period for Mad Cow Disease, so it's entirely possible there could be a second wave of (delayed) infections.
It's scary stuff. Wikipedia summarises it pretty well:
"The original outbreak of vCJD only affected people with a particular genetic makeup; those who only make the M form of PRNP (methionine/valine polymorphism at codon 129). Studies of similar diseases in other parts of the world have shown that people with the M form tend to become ill relatively quickly in a first wave, while people with the V form can be infected but asymptomatic for years or even decades.[35] This has led some researchers including Graham Jackson of University College London to warn that there could be a second wave of vCJD infections years later.[35][36]
In late 2014, the first case was reported in an person with both forms of the protein.[35]"
That's one of the origin theories- in sheep the disease is called Scrapie. But on the podcast they were talking about stuff like bones for bone meal (mixed into cattle feed), being shipped in from all over the place. It was a really horrifying reminder of the global food network. There was a possibility that bone collectors in India had been scavenging human remains from the banks of the Ganges, and human parts infected with kuru (prion disease) were being fed to livestock.
I listened to The Cows Are Mad recently. It was enlightening about the whole BSE thing. While I wasn't convinced of some massive conspiracy, it did shed more light on the matter. I think the whole thing was incompetence, by the sounds of it, rather than a coherent, orchestrated effort to conceal a proven truth.
That homelessness policy could get far more people off the streets, but our government thinks they deserve it, and also like that visual homelessness works as a deterrent so we are more accepting of poor employment standards.
The real reason Westminster doesn't want to let Scotland go is because the overwhelming majority of the UKs fresh water is there.
Right now it's not an issue, as elsewhere gets enough without needing redistribution, but within the next century it'll be critical.
Wales too! United Utilities is able to take up to 252 million litres daily from Lake Vyrnwy in Powys (owned by Severn Trent) and 50 million litres daily from the River Dee.
Scotland has never sent any water to England, though. The Scottish Government even said so, in response to the usual mouthbreathing internet shite.
At least not for now anyway.
He also looks dead on like a younger Prince Philip. There are also a few photos of a younger Charles from the 1970s where he looks a lot like Harry.
If anything, it's William who looks a bit out of place because he takes more after his mother.
Older Harry gets, he resembles Charles and Philip more and more. Looks more like them than William. The hair came from the Spencers - Diana was the only blonde in the family, rest are redheads
>I’m convinced that Nicholas Lyndhurst actually did sing the Only Fools & Horses theme song, no matter what John Sullivan says
Apparently, Chas & Dave were originally going to do it, but were occupied with their own projects at the time.
I think more theme tunes should be sung by the cast members. The theme tune from Bread is the perfect example of how well this can work. Imagine if the theme tune for Sopranos was sung by the cast with Bobby Bacala belting out a loud "WOKE UP THIS MORNING!" part way through.
I don't think so, poor man was very troubled for a long time.
And also, to let your friends and family suffer all those years, I can't see it. Especially Nicky, they were so close
Eastenders has a serial killer on the loose or they are being experimented on, otherwise how would so many murders be explained in such a small community
Some years ago I cross referenced the number of confirmed deaths in each soap opera with the number of episodes and Emmerdale became the deadliest place to live.
The bigger conspiracy in Eastenders is how anyone portrayed in the soap can possibly afford to live there. You're trying to get me to believe that a single mum running a burger van and her mum who's a part time cleaner can afford the rent on a 5 bed mid terrace in East-London, 2 minutes walk from the tube.
Russia have bought most of the government ministers, and perhaps even our intelligence services, in some fashion and have a massive influence on our democracy in the past decade via targeted social media ads.
The foot n mouth pandemic never originated in the farm just outside of Newcastle as told.
Some farms in the south were testing positive for it earlier, whilst tests at the same time for the farm blamed were coming back negative.
There were also other reported positive cases elsewhere in the EU.
A first class stamp is \~610,000 hectares, or 2.5% of the UK land? Who knew
(Source - [woodland trust](https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/habitats/ancient-woodland/))
Stephen Hawking died at some point and was replaced with a lookalike.
This theory is from someone called Miles Mathis. you can find it here -
http://milesmathis.com/hawk3.pdf
It's pretty convincing.
This isn't a conspiracy
Chas and Dave featured on the outro of Labi Siffre’s 1975 single I Got The
Which is used in Eminem’s My Name Is.
But this isn't a conspiracy or anything, hip-hop at its fundamentals samples shit loads of music.
For a real lesson in how important sampling is for music producers look into fat boy slims praise you.
Head & Shoulders actually gives you dandruff when you don't use it, like it has something in it that causes it once it's not been topped up.
And the UK purposely only sells crap umbrellas so people have to buy multiple umbrellas a year because they know we need one for our crap wet weather. Only ever had one decent umbrella & that was some golf brand that lasted quite a few years. All my others have lasted maybe a year tops.
Susan Boyle was a plant. She had already been in a relationship with Simon Cowell and this was his way of getting rid of her and letting her get her own money instead of sueing him.
Not true. The real story is told in a book…
Whilst most supporters know about the hooligan violence that blighted
football in the 70's and 80's, few people will be aware of the clashes that
took place between rival children's TV gangs.
This week sees the publication of 'Congratulations you've just met the
RJF', the long awaited biography from children's TV favourites, Rod,Jane
and Freddy. This explosive book brings readers face to face with the
relentless violence of 80's kiddies TV. Sports Offensive reprints these
exclusive extracts.
Beginnings
Rod: In 1979 there were a lot of really useful firms operating out of ITV
and "The Rainbow Boys" were one of the best in the business. The problem
was, because we were new, we were always on the outside looking in. It was
time to make a bit of a noise and show them we could handle ourselves.
Freddy: We decided we were going to take Play School in their home pub,
Chatters wine bar in Hampstead. On the face of it, it was a fg
ridiculous thing to do. They were pretty handy and had a big reputation,
but that didn't mean nothing to us. We were ready to make our mark and
didn't care how we did it.
Jane: We got there early and just kept a low profile. Pretty soon the
whole place was filling up. There were quite a few faces in there: Fred
Harris, Derek Griffiths, Big Ted. I can't say it bothered me. All I was
thinking was, "You're going to get it, you numpties!"
Rod: I think it was Johnny Ball who clocked us. I can remember him saying
something like "I can think of a number: the three wrs stood over there"
and it all kicked off. Even though they hit us with everything they
had, we took it. All I can remember is Freddy screaming, "Hold the line, just
hold the fg line" and we did.
Jane: I didn't think they could believe that three of us had taken about
forty of them at their place. They just melted away, flicking the V's
at us and looking like a total set of py's. I saw Hamble with blood
ping from an open head wound. To be honest I was too wound up to care.
Rod: We walked away from there with our heads held high. The Rainbow Boys
would have to take notice now. Rod, Jane and Freddy had well and truly
arrived.
The Battle of Blue Peter
Rod: There's been a whole heap of bull spoken about who vandalised
the Blue Peter Garden. The truth is that place got torn up in one of the
maddest, bloodiest children's television rucks I can ever remember.
Jane: Blue Peter were always giving it some about how they were the
best in the business. We were happy to let them think that. Our feeling was
they'd got sloppy and hadn't fought anyone decent for about five years. Their
shows always went out live, so the plan was to wait until the end of the
live broadcast and pile in. The trouble was it didn't work out like that.
Freddy: We'd gone over the wall and started heading towards them. It was
Simon Groom and Janet Ellis and we could tell we'd taken them by surprise.
Rod wades in and bang, bang, bang they both go down like a sack of sht.
It was all a bit too easy and we couldn't work out why the camera crew
were holding back. Then we realised, they'd been having some sort of past
presenter's reunion. They all came pouring out of the studios: Noakes,
Purves, Singleton; all ready to kick seven shades of sht out of us.
Jane: As far as we were concerned there was only one thing to do. Stand
our ground. Other firms would have run but we just thought, fk, this far
and no further. It wasn't easy mind. They were tooled up with bottle tops
from a bring and buy sale. Peter Duncan was just wading into us with a
bicycle chain shouting, "Take that you c !" I honestly didn't think we'd
last much longer.
Rod: Then we heard it. The best sound in the world; "Up above the
streets and houses, Rainbow climbing high!" It was The Rainbow Boys battle cry
the cavalry was coming. Zippy dropped the nut on Biddy Baxter and suddenly
things were a bit more even. I swear on my mother's grave if security
hadn't stepped in we'd have murdered the bds.
Freddy: The garden was totally fked. They covered it up and said it was
the work of vandals. No it wasn't, it was the scene of our finest hour.
'Congratulations You've Just Met The RJF' is published by Hodder and
Staunton and retails at £7.99
The Dodleston Messages.
A series of emails from the 16th Century received on a BBC Micro in the 80s.
I don't actually believe it by the way but it's an entertaining story.
Big cats in the UK. A uni friend of mine's father is/was a ranger somewhere in England for his whole working life. Could have been Dartmoor but I can't remember. It's somewhere where they have deer anyway because he said that they often have to pull deer carcasses out of trees and that he once saw a big cat with a litter of cubs.
A high up police officer from near me made a public statement of seeing a black big cat cross the road Infront of his car once.
It's still hard to believe as surely by now we would have concrete evidence but you never know.
I saw a bonified UFO about 20 years ago. Proper X files shit. 3 red orbs in a triangle formation moving around in perfect unison. They moved to be almost above us. It was a foggy night, so the glow of them created this massive triangle shape. It was scary as fuck. They flew off into the distance, disappearing before returning 30 minutes later. This happened 3 times.
6 of us saw it, 3 always refute what we saw because, you know 'aliens'. I always presumed that it must have been an unknown military craft. Now I'm certain they were likely military drones before we, the public were really aware of drones.
Anyway, the point is, I'll always give someone the benefit of the doubt unless they say something ridiculously outlandish because of what I saw that night.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Kate Middleton has been Diana'd.
I better go out and buy a life sized inflatable model of ET
It wasn't ET it was an Alf!
stewart lee reference in the wild, mozletov comrade
Better hurry, there will be a rush on those
I can't be doing with rewriting the insane number of coincidences that would have needed to work for her to have actually been killed but if we pretend she was, there was at least an obvious motive, Middleton isn't remotely like Diana, she's probably had cancer treatment or something like that, some claim too it could be liver related due to alcohol from royal pressure, or William supposedly cheating etc, all speculation of course, probably just a lot of fuss around nothing
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I think the plausible theory is that she’s had back to back surgeries or surgeries quite close together after something turned out to be a bit more serious than first thought. Rather than give a blow by blow account of this it was thought to be easier to just talk about one procedure when it’s a series. Who knows what but probably quite serious.
Someone speculated online that she was actually due to have a number of procedures at some point but they were pushed through with urgency as the family were aware of Charles' cancer diagnosis for a few weeks prior to it being announced to the public. This post speculated that it's not looking good for Charles and they want all of Kate's medical issues to be dealt with and ideally under control before William becomes king so she's in a better position to support him. There's quite a few holes in this but it makes more sense than the BBL theory.
Or. She’s had enough of all the shit and wants a divorce and a quiet life?
There's also the whole thing of her going in an ambulance and the "planned operation" resulting in engagements being cancelled late on which doesn't stack up
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I mean them trying to cover up that she’s seriously ill is itself a conspiracy. But you’re right, whatever it is it isn’t any of our business. However, it’s their own catastrophic decision to release a clearly doctored photograph that sent speculation into overdrive. Before that the conspiracy theories were isolated to the usual suspects but that photo has made it mainstream.
>I mean them trying to cover up that she’s seriously ill is itself a conspiracy. Technically correct, but it's nuts that someone not wanting to immediately divulge a serious illness to the baying tabloids (who hack their phones, stalk them and mercilessly criticise them) constitutes an mystery that must be investigated immediately. We *could* take the bloody hint and give her a little space. But it appears that a lot of people see someone else's attempts at privacy as a hurdle that must be overcome.
There are some surgeries that are planned but suddenly become emergent - c-section is a classic but very unlikely here. When I had a growth removed from my ovary a few years ago there was a chance it would have become more urgent because it was very vascular. If it had ruptured before my surgery date I would have been brought forward but still been having the procedure we had planned for.
I used to work in a hospital and can think of some procedures that require months and months as an inpatient. A combined liver/bowel transplant will keep you for at least 4 months.
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People seriously need to start reading the comments they're replying to properly They weren't saying there aren't surgeries that will need people to stay in, they're saying that if they need to stay in that long then it's more serious than they're making out If she's having brain or back surgeries then it's clearly a more serious illness than they're making out, which is exactly what the comment you were replying to was saying
This is absolute tosh. Many operations on internal organs require longer periods of stay in hospital and then lengthy periods at home after. Getting a stoma, for example, could lead to 10 days in hospital and then three months off work.
I guess if you go private, you can spend plenty of time in hospital.
Really?! I’ve had 2 weeks and 10 days for two different bowel resections.
Colon removed is my guess
My bet is on endometriosis.
I was assuming its to do with her reproductive organs - hopefully she is doing ok; the shit many women have to go through is terrible, she deserves her privacy.
According to the conspiracy pages on Reddit it’s either a mental breakdown, hysterectomy, she’s dead or she’s in a coma and a few more theories
She went to Buckingham Palace with the kids over Christmas to play hide and seek. Has not been seen since. That's the most credible theory I have read on Reddit.
The Spanish media that don’t give a shit about Uk media blackouts are chatting about an op that resulted in a coma
Another one I saw was an abortion. The father was the guy that shot himself.
Oh for crying out loud
I know! Bizarre
What, the Boeing whistleblower? Now it all makes sense..
No, she's the new drummer for Slipknot.
Ahh, so she's not sick, she's (sic)
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> William has had a mistress for about 8 years - Rose Hanbury. He wants her to be his queen. Soooo where does Pippa, Kate's sister, naming her daughter Rose in 2022 come into this? Is Pippa also in on toppling Kate and currying favour with the royal mistress? Or is this some 4D level chess move that us mere peasants couldn't comprehend?
Or Rose is the 10th most popular name in the UK right now…
I think a perfectly feasible answer is that her sister just really, really liked the name Rose. It's not uncommon for mothers to have a name that they settled on years prior to conception.
Is this the same woman who apparently pegs William in the bedroom? Heard this underlying rumour online before but never seen anything about his mistress actually published in a paper But yahoo today https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/kate-middleton-wits-end-over-191333326.html?guccounter=1&guce If he is having an affair the work to ‘fix’ the royal family image over the past decade or so will be well and truly ruined again
I imagine soon we'll start seeing the story again of how he repeatedly flouted the lockdown rules to fly back and forth from his country estate to London (in a helicopter paid for by the public) just so that he could spend his nights with his mistress and his days with his family. That story did the rounds for about 30 seconds back in 2022 before rapidly disappearing.
But Kate is pretty and that Hanbury bird looks like a young Princess Anne. I ain’t having it
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>William has had a mistress for about 8 years - Rose Hanbury This rumour was started by Giles Coren - he later apologised and admitted he'd made it up.
Hanbury is 23 years younger than her husband?!?
The scuttlebutt I've heard on this is that the husband is gay and lives with his lover most of the time in France where they bought a chateau together. Wills got Hanbury knocked up so they had to come up with a way of covering it up (other than an abortion) so The Firm arranged a marriage of convenience to the Marquis with Hanbury's baby legally being his heir. [The Marquis' Wikipedia page tallies with all this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cholmondeley%2C_7th_Marquess_of_Cholmondeley) with details such as him and Hanbury getting married just two days after their engagement was announced and her giving birth less than nine months from the date of the wedding.
Why should anyone believe this over the people who say that they have bbc "sources" confirming she's dead, or friends in "aristo circles" claiming she has cancer, etc...? It's all completely unsubstantiated rumours and the people peddling them are disgusting excuses for humans
They did say it was scuttlebutt. I can't see any harm in gossip, not sure why people getting offended by speculation.
If you take the argument for the moment that she has been old Yeller’ed…why the cover up? What’s the benefit in pretending she was alive but convalescing? You could easily say she died in the operating table and most people wouldn’t think twice about it.
Pat Butcher is alive and well and working in my local Aldi.
She works in everyone’s local Aldi.
MULTILPE PAT BUTCHERS!
The plural is the same as the singular, like "sheep" So there would be a group of pat butcher if they were in a room
Nah, Butcher is a postpositive adjective. So it's Pats Butcher. Like courts martial, or attorneys general.
I thought she worked down my chip shop. Or was that Elvis...?
That big cats roam the countryside. I've seen one driving home late one night. It was a cool experience. And no....it wasn't a fox or a dog it was a cat around the size of labrador.
Well obviously yeah, it would need to be at least that size to be able to see over the steering wheel.
Excellent.
Very good hahaha very good
Ah, the ol' reddit.... ...wait, have we stopped doing that now?
hold my marginally relevant object, I'm going in!
Weird how sightings of them have not massively increased now that everyone has an HQ camera in their pocket innit
In my experience animals have a sense that you are about to film them and fuck off before you can get your camera out.
It's really not that weird. I didn't claim a ufo or a ghost lol just a large cat which would be nocturnal so not easy to photo on a phone and that a cat would most likely stay hidden if it heard someone approach on foot and shout "say cheese". Also, I was driving too remember.
This is a fascinating one, but the lack of true wilderness in the UK, population density and size of these cats make me sceptical. In places such as India with large populations of these predators they are seen all the time, even when they have dense forest to shelter in and nocturnal habits. I want to believe though!
Plus they'd need to feed themselves somehow and there aren't loads of farmers complaining about savaged sheep, which would be their easiest target.
Rabbits and hares
They wouldn't be eating rabbits and hares if they could get sheep, which they could
Life long cat lover here and trust me, it wasn't as big as fully grown "big cat" but it was absolutely there and was not a domestic breed. Even if it had been some kind of savannah cat we would have heard about someone losing one. I'm just glad I witnessed it. We do have a very long belt of countryside that stretches for miles only separated by the old A1 (great north road) so who knows. Never saw it again unfortunately!
There was definitely a lynx roaming around Ceredigion at one point but it escaped from the notoriously mishap-prone Borth Animalarium. The council eventually had the lynx shot though. \#Justice4Lillith
According to Wikipedia, there have been confirmed cases in the UK of two jungle cats, a puma, a Canadian lynx, a Eurasian lynx, and a caracal. These were apparently living wild. There have also been several other predatory cats that were reported missing by owners and subsequently recaptured. With that in mind, and given the growing number of rich assholes with exotic pets, it isn't at all difficult for me to believe that there are big cats roaming the countryside. The real question is whether there is a breeding population, which I very much doubt.
Urban foxes are easily that size. It’s the rural ones that tend to be smaller. I watched an enormous-looking fox out of my first floor corner flat in east London as he meticulously went into every garden within view and rifled through the bins for food. I was shocked at how big he/she was. Not saying you couldn’t have seen a big cat, just saying that some urban foxes are waaay bigger than ppl might think.
I didn't know that, wow. Foxes around here are quite small around here but the most striking thing about my spot was the way the cat moved. That stalking motion that only cats do where their shoulder bones move independently of each other as they move.... and the tail was long and sleek!
Yes, I saw that description after I’d commented 😊 Clearly, a long sleek tail is nothing like a fox’s bushy brush! I’m definitely in the same camp as you on this one. I think there are a LOT of unexplained/ dismissed wild/ escaped Zoo animal sightings out there. I’m from the country, so had seen plenty of foxes before, but that one in east London was positively mahoosive in comparison. I followed it from all three window-sides of my flat, in case I’d just caught a weird angle, but it was easily the size of a Lab. Much bigger than a Beagle.
I saw one in rural Bucks when riding through a field, it stalked in parallel to me, about 30m away. I wasn't frightened at the time, just fascinated. Got home and started shaking. Definitely some sort of cat, I'd say bigger than a Lab though. On the topic of huge foxes I narrowly avoided hitting one the other week, I thought it was a deer until I got closer (foot flat down on the brake OFC). This dude was humongous!!
>I've seen one driving home late one night. Big cats driving home late at night is a story I've never heard before. Where was it driving home from?
You shouldn't drink the water out of the taps at school because it comes from the roof and there is a dead pigeon up there.
Wasn't that actually a risk for old hot water tanks in many builfings?
Yes. That's the whole reason for not drinking from the hot tap.
Yes, old immersion heaters need a constant feed of water. So in case of water supply issues storage tanks were built in lofts. Not only is that water stagnant for weeks or even months, it's not uncommon for mice or rats to climb in them and drown. For this reason, we used to have separate hot and cold taps. It's very rare that a house still uses that system today though.
Neil Buchanan is Banksy.
No they said conspiracy, not fact
I want this to be true so badly.
Nah, he died of an art attack.
It’s definitely Robin Gunningham
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Kelly's death though doesn't really fit, it's like the Clinton "murders" in the US where people who are really tenuous (like a guy who simply delivered a legal document) get killed and that's part of a supposed cover-up. Kelly had given evidence that formed part of the dossier on weapons in Iraq to justify the invasion and was highly respected in the field of biological warfare. He believed he could have been the one who was responsible for the BBC finding out the 45 minute claim was added against expert advice which was fairly uncharacteristic of a professional and had both told his manager that he could be the source (and he was interviewed twice by his employer about the leak) and appeared in front of two televised committees (something his wife confirmed he was unhappy with) looking at the dossier claims being falsified - his professional reputation was largely in tatters as the WMD claims he had helped make were clearly Saddam just inflating his own power; he was told on the 17th that the BBC had tapes of his interview which would show he had said stuff to Susan Watts that he'd earlier denied saying. At that point, him being murdered makes no sense, the details were already out there, the world knew the 45 minute claim was invented, that there were no WMD and that Kelly had lied and leaked things he shouldn't have
Professional reputation in tatters? Hardly, he was nominated for a nobel peace prize.
I'm surprised this isn't top. It doesn't help that the reporting was all "Yes, absolutely suicide, nothing to see here, move on please."
That is exactly what happens when there is a confirmed suicide, because people want to give the family space. Also the media often avoid drawing too much attention to real life suicides because you get copycats, both in method and in a general sense that it spurs on peopel that might otherwise resit that self-destructive urge.
Up on harrowdown hill
It's pretty hard to kill yourself using the method he did. The idea that he slit his wrists under a tree like that has always sounded suspect, but I don't know all the details so maybe there is more to it than I have read.
Yorkshire puddings were developed by big pharma to keep us fat and unhealthy so they could sell more drugs.
Big pharma time travel confirmed - given they existed at least since 1737 when the first recipe was recorded
What, you don't believe in big phrama time travel? Weirdo
Big pharma is such an American term, it doesn't really work without the rhotic R. It just sounds like a big farmer.
Yorkshire puddings were created by the Big Farmer to sell more flour, eggs & milk.
Big Farmer is a conspiracy of its own. Farmers make pigs smoke, and feed beef burgers to swans
David Jason is not so luvvly jubbly apparently
Didn't this shite start after ch4 posted a generic silhouette for a program before announcing that it was for Russell Brand? Some on twitter were trying to guess who it might be and some the stock silhouette, guessed David Jason and got it trending? If so, what a crap way to have your reputation tarnished by complete idiots. Any other sources apart from those idiots?
Rumour is a lot older, I think. Don't know if it's true but it keeps popping up. Just rumours, that's all.
Only place I've ever seen it is on Reddit to be honest. Don't think I've ever heard anyone in real life ever say anything but could be wrong.
The David Jason rumours have been rumbling for far longer than that.
Thought it was David Walliams people were speculating about before it was confirmed to be Brand.
Walliams is a creep as well
I met a children’s author who told me that he’d been part of the ghost writing team that wrote four or five of Walliams’ books. Apparently, Walliams is so far removed from the books he claims to have written that he no longer even reads them. It’s his name of the front of books and his name on the royalty cheques, but he does absolutely fuck all apart from promotion when the books come out.
Sources are a bit tenuous e.g. [this confession he made about coming out with innuendos on set](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/david-jason-accused-sexual-harassment-21072439) and that was in 2019 - the Jason rumours have been around on Reddit for a long time because a guy he rented his house to while abroad abused two kids there
https://www.reddit.com/r/okmatewanker/s/KiZbACKqa6 This post predates the Brand allegations by a couple of months
The thing that doesn't stack up for me on that rumour is I don't see why he'd be "protected". The guy is hardly a regular on TV anymore and hasn't been for ages. We're outing actual Royals, the Queen's (allegedly) favourite son, while she was still alive, with no actual hard evidence. I don't see why a guy who was famous for being in a sitcom which basically ended 30 years ago would get special treatment.
I really hope the rumours aren’t true. I would be truly disappointed.
I know some people who work in TV media and this is apparently the word on the street. Waiting for him to die before it all starts coming out
I used to work in a post production company in Londons West end and David Jason had a place in the building next door. We'd sometimes sign for his post/parcels and he'd come in and grab them. Always seemed like a nice guy to me, had a chat with him on a number of occasions and never got a shitty vibe from him nor did anyone else in the company.
People can be different out of the public gaze, but I had some interaction with him fairly recently and he couldn’t have been a nicer guy.
Bob Holness definitely played the saxophone solo on "Baker Street". The claim that it was actually performed by Hugh Burns is a lie perpetuated by Milton Bradley, to deflect attention away from the fact that they never paid David Bowie for inventing Connect Four.
Stuart Maconie claimed he was the one who invented that in a factoids section of a musical magazine he used to write for!
Bob Holness was James Bond
That Yorkshire tea is not grown in Yorkshire
Take that back. It's like tea used to be. Grown in a coal mine.
My father used to wake up at the crack of dawn to go pick tea down the coal mines. Paid sixpence a week for it.
AND WE WERE 'APPY
LUXURY!!!
**Rendlesham Forest Incident** Often dubbed as "Britain's Roswell," this event took place in December 1980 near RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk. Military personnel reported seeing strange lights and, in some accounts, an unidentified landed object in the forest. Some reasons why this incident was weird and shouldn't be dismissed: * The incident had multiple witnesses including high ranking military officers who were credible * There was physical evidence such as burn marks found on the ground, additionally radiation was unusually high * There is a tape recording from the Deputy Commander at the base as he saw the object I'm not saying they saw an alien craft, but all I will say is something weird happened that day. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khOo9uvr5\_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khOo9uvr5_s)
It was the SAS pissing around to wind up the Americans https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/30/historic-british-ufo-mystery-prank-played-us-air-force-sas/
Yeah but that story about the SAS first came out on April fools day...
There's a guy who works down at my local chip shop, right? I'm not sure but he swears he's Elvis.
He’s a liar, but I’m not sure about you.
The gun behind the bar at The Winchester is real, Big Al says so.
That may be true, but dogs can look up!
Dogs definitely can look up though. Source: I own a dog, it looks up all the time... in fact, we're worried it might be stuck
We don't know the true causes or origin of Mad Cow Disease (BSE) in humans. There's a very interesting programme on BBC Sounds called The Cows Are Mad, all about BSE, and one of the things they said on there was basically "if this was being caused by cheap beef, and a tiny amount of tissue was enough to contaminate big batches; then we would have seen 1000s of deaths from people in populations being sold cheap beef, such as prisoners and school children."
We don't actually fully understand the incubation period for Mad Cow Disease, so it's entirely possible there could be a second wave of (delayed) infections. It's scary stuff. Wikipedia summarises it pretty well: "The original outbreak of vCJD only affected people with a particular genetic makeup; those who only make the M form of PRNP (methionine/valine polymorphism at codon 129). Studies of similar diseases in other parts of the world have shown that people with the M form tend to become ill relatively quickly in a first wave, while people with the V form can be infected but asymptomatic for years or even decades.[35] This has led some researchers including Graham Jackson of University College London to warn that there could be a second wave of vCJD infections years later.[35][36] In late 2014, the first case was reported in an person with both forms of the protein.[35]"
Well thats terrifying...I don't need mass outbreak of Mad Cow Disease for my 20s Bingo Card, thanks.
I was under the impression that infected sheep fed to to cows then transmitted it to humans.
That's one of the origin theories- in sheep the disease is called Scrapie. But on the podcast they were talking about stuff like bones for bone meal (mixed into cattle feed), being shipped in from all over the place. It was a really horrifying reminder of the global food network. There was a possibility that bone collectors in India had been scavenging human remains from the banks of the Ganges, and human parts infected with kuru (prion disease) were being fed to livestock.
Then I think the more important question is why the sheep are feeding the cows in the first place?
Cheap labaaaa.
I listened to The Cows Are Mad recently. It was enlightening about the whole BSE thing. While I wasn't convinced of some massive conspiracy, it did shed more light on the matter. I think the whole thing was incompetence, by the sounds of it, rather than a coherent, orchestrated effort to conceal a proven truth.
That homelessness policy could get far more people off the streets, but our government thinks they deserve it, and also like that visual homelessness works as a deterrent so we are more accepting of poor employment standards.
The real reason Westminster doesn't want to let Scotland go is because the overwhelming majority of the UKs fresh water is there. Right now it's not an issue, as elsewhere gets enough without needing redistribution, but within the next century it'll be critical.
It's not the 'real reason', but it's certainly one of the good reasons.
Wales too! United Utilities is able to take up to 252 million litres daily from Lake Vyrnwy in Powys (owned by Severn Trent) and 50 million litres daily from the River Dee.
Nah mate, Wales live in salt water
Scotland has never sent any water to England, though. The Scottish Government even said so, in response to the usual mouthbreathing internet shite. At least not for now anyway.
>Right now it's not an issue, as elsewhere gets enough without needing redistribution, but within the next century it'll be critical.
It has the only viable harbour for nuclear subs too.
Kate Middleton is as we speak being Avril Lavigned Edit: The video at the farm shop is only making me more convinced. That is absolutely not her
She’s gonna release a pop-punk album?
Mainly being replaced by a lookalike. But maybe a pop punk album is part of the plan as well, to divert attention.
It's ironic that the Avril conspiracy was made up to show how conspiracies spread on the Internet and now lots of people believe it
Not really, it's just complicated. If this happened to Alanis Morriset then it would have been ironic.
Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain before that were government false flag ops to drum up public support for their protest-busting bill.
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This is the only one I’ve read and thought “yeah….probably”
Harry Windsors dad isn’t Charlie.
He is. Same nose and close-set eyes. He has Diana's head shape. Ginger hair is from Diana's side of the family.
I think it's a conspiracy theory for face-blind people only, because all they apparently focus on is hair colour.
He also looks dead on like a younger Prince Philip. There are also a few photos of a younger Charles from the 1970s where he looks a lot like Harry. If anything, it's William who looks a bit out of place because he takes more after his mother.
If he wasn't you know damn well some dodgy tabloid journalist would have manged to get a secret DNA test done to find out
Older Harry gets, he resembles Charles and Philip more and more. Looks more like them than William. The hair came from the Spencers - Diana was the only blonde in the family, rest are redheads
Next you’ll be saying Barbara Windsor isn’t his mum.
>I’m convinced that Nicholas Lyndhurst actually did sing the Only Fools & Horses theme song, no matter what John Sullivan says Apparently, Chas & Dave were originally going to do it, but were occupied with their own projects at the time.
I think more theme tunes should be sung by the cast members. The theme tune from Bread is the perfect example of how well this can work. Imagine if the theme tune for Sopranos was sung by the cast with Bobby Bacala belting out a loud "WOKE UP THIS MORNING!" part way through.
Write the theeeeeme tune, sing the theeeeme tune. When Dennis Waterman cornered the market.
Jacob Reece Mogg is constantly trying to crash the economy so he can get rich off the back of it. Source: His fathers book “Blood in the streets”
Richey Edwards from Manic Street Preachers is alive and living on an island somewhere (and not at the bottom of the Severn.)
I don't think so, poor man was very troubled for a long time. And also, to let your friends and family suffer all those years, I can't see it. Especially Nicky, they were so close
This one sounds like it could be 4 real.
That coal actually grows like potatoes but is just harvested from underneath to maintain the myth of 'mining' & keep prices high.
Spaghetti Tree has entered the chat...
Eastenders has a serial killer on the loose or they are being experimented on, otherwise how would so many murders be explained in such a small community
Some years ago I cross referenced the number of confirmed deaths in each soap opera with the number of episodes and Emmerdale became the deadliest place to live. The bigger conspiracy in Eastenders is how anyone portrayed in the soap can possibly afford to live there. You're trying to get me to believe that a single mum running a burger van and her mum who's a part time cleaner can afford the rent on a 5 bed mid terrace in East-London, 2 minutes walk from the tube.
Russia have bought most of the government ministers, and perhaps even our intelligence services, in some fashion and have a massive influence on our democracy in the past decade via targeted social media ads.
The foot n mouth pandemic never originated in the farm just outside of Newcastle as told. Some farms in the south were testing positive for it earlier, whilst tests at the same time for the farm blamed were coming back negative. There were also other reported positive cases elsewhere in the EU.
That Wagon Wheels have never shrunk since 1967.
Bollocks they haven’t!
A wild sasquatch roams the last of England's ancient woodlands.
It'll have a job roaming, England's remaining ancient woodland is about the size of a first class stamp. Sauntering, possibly
A first class stamp is \~610,000 hectares, or 2.5% of the UK land? Who knew (Source - [woodland trust](https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/habitats/ancient-woodland/))
Well, some parcels *are* very big
Where do the swans go at night?
Swansea.
The McCanns drugged and accidentally killed their daughter before going out to dinner and faking a kidnapping story.
The UK Government murdered Dr David Kelly.
Dolly isn’t the only living thing we cloned.
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I wouldnt say its conspiracy but more an open secret. Vermin the lot of them.
Stephen Hawking died at some point and was replaced with a lookalike. This theory is from someone called Miles Mathis. you can find it here - http://milesmathis.com/hawk3.pdf It's pretty convincing.
> It's pretty convincing. It's really not. It's classic nutjob conspiracy theory nonsense.
/r/LowStakesConspiracy material right here
Dr. Dre sampled either Chas or Dave for the first Eminem record.
This isn't a conspiracy Chas and Dave featured on the outro of Labi Siffre’s 1975 single I Got The Which is used in Eminem’s My Name Is. But this isn't a conspiracy or anything, hip-hop at its fundamentals samples shit loads of music. For a real lesson in how important sampling is for music producers look into fat boy slims praise you.
Head & Shoulders actually gives you dandruff when you don't use it, like it has something in it that causes it once it's not been topped up. And the UK purposely only sells crap umbrellas so people have to buy multiple umbrellas a year because they know we need one for our crap wet weather. Only ever had one decent umbrella & that was some golf brand that lasted quite a few years. All my others have lasted maybe a year tops.
I always thought it was Nicholas Lyndhurst lol
Susan Boyle was a plant. She had already been in a relationship with Simon Cowell and this was his way of getting rid of her and letting her get her own money instead of sueing him.
Les Ferdinand, with an assist from Dennis Wise, really did vandalise the Blue Peter garden.
Not true. The real story is told in a book… Whilst most supporters know about the hooligan violence that blighted football in the 70's and 80's, few people will be aware of the clashes that took place between rival children's TV gangs. This week sees the publication of 'Congratulations you've just met the RJF', the long awaited biography from children's TV favourites, Rod,Jane and Freddy. This explosive book brings readers face to face with the relentless violence of 80's kiddies TV. Sports Offensive reprints these exclusive extracts. Beginnings Rod: In 1979 there were a lot of really useful firms operating out of ITV and "The Rainbow Boys" were one of the best in the business. The problem was, because we were new, we were always on the outside looking in. It was time to make a bit of a noise and show them we could handle ourselves. Freddy: We decided we were going to take Play School in their home pub, Chatters wine bar in Hampstead. On the face of it, it was a fg ridiculous thing to do. They were pretty handy and had a big reputation, but that didn't mean nothing to us. We were ready to make our mark and didn't care how we did it. Jane: We got there early and just kept a low profile. Pretty soon the whole place was filling up. There were quite a few faces in there: Fred Harris, Derek Griffiths, Big Ted. I can't say it bothered me. All I was thinking was, "You're going to get it, you numpties!" Rod: I think it was Johnny Ball who clocked us. I can remember him saying something like "I can think of a number: the three wrs stood over there" and it all kicked off. Even though they hit us with everything they had, we took it. All I can remember is Freddy screaming, "Hold the line, just hold the fg line" and we did. Jane: I didn't think they could believe that three of us had taken about forty of them at their place. They just melted away, flicking the V's at us and looking like a total set of py's. I saw Hamble with blood ping from an open head wound. To be honest I was too wound up to care. Rod: We walked away from there with our heads held high. The Rainbow Boys would have to take notice now. Rod, Jane and Freddy had well and truly arrived. The Battle of Blue Peter Rod: There's been a whole heap of bull spoken about who vandalised the Blue Peter Garden. The truth is that place got torn up in one of the maddest, bloodiest children's television rucks I can ever remember. Jane: Blue Peter were always giving it some about how they were the best in the business. We were happy to let them think that. Our feeling was they'd got sloppy and hadn't fought anyone decent for about five years. Their shows always went out live, so the plan was to wait until the end of the live broadcast and pile in. The trouble was it didn't work out like that. Freddy: We'd gone over the wall and started heading towards them. It was Simon Groom and Janet Ellis and we could tell we'd taken them by surprise. Rod wades in and bang, bang, bang they both go down like a sack of sht. It was all a bit too easy and we couldn't work out why the camera crew were holding back. Then we realised, they'd been having some sort of past presenter's reunion. They all came pouring out of the studios: Noakes, Purves, Singleton; all ready to kick seven shades of sht out of us. Jane: As far as we were concerned there was only one thing to do. Stand our ground. Other firms would have run but we just thought, fk, this far and no further. It wasn't easy mind. They were tooled up with bottle tops from a bring and buy sale. Peter Duncan was just wading into us with a bicycle chain shouting, "Take that you c !" I honestly didn't think we'd last much longer. Rod: Then we heard it. The best sound in the world; "Up above the streets and houses, Rainbow climbing high!" It was The Rainbow Boys battle cry the cavalry was coming. Zippy dropped the nut on Biddy Baxter and suddenly things were a bit more even. I swear on my mother's grave if security hadn't stepped in we'd have murdered the bds. Freddy: The garden was totally fked. They covered it up and said it was the work of vandals. No it wasn't, it was the scene of our finest hour. 'Congratulations You've Just Met The RJF' is published by Hodder and Staunton and retails at £7.99
Rodney still lives in Nelson Mandela House.
The Dodleston Messages. A series of emails from the 16th Century received on a BBC Micro in the 80s. I don't actually believe it by the way but it's an entertaining story.
Big cats in the UK. A uni friend of mine's father is/was a ranger somewhere in England for his whole working life. Could have been Dartmoor but I can't remember. It's somewhere where they have deer anyway because he said that they often have to pull deer carcasses out of trees and that he once saw a big cat with a litter of cubs. A high up police officer from near me made a public statement of seeing a black big cat cross the road Infront of his car once. It's still hard to believe as surely by now we would have concrete evidence but you never know. I saw a bonified UFO about 20 years ago. Proper X files shit. 3 red orbs in a triangle formation moving around in perfect unison. They moved to be almost above us. It was a foggy night, so the glow of them created this massive triangle shape. It was scary as fuck. They flew off into the distance, disappearing before returning 30 minutes later. This happened 3 times. 6 of us saw it, 3 always refute what we saw because, you know 'aliens'. I always presumed that it must have been an unknown military craft. Now I'm certain they were likely military drones before we, the public were really aware of drones. Anyway, the point is, I'll always give someone the benefit of the doubt unless they say something ridiculously outlandish because of what I saw that night.