Yes! It’s August which means it’s silly season once again.
“Silly season” was a phrase first coined here in the UK, first used in connection with the annual shut down of parliament over the summer months.
Parliament has breaks called recesses during the year when it doesn’t meet and is effectively closed. Specific dates are published each year but as a rough rule of thumb for the summer months, parliament is in recess from late July to early September, in parallel with the school summer holidays.
And while we won’t be taking a break from our transcription services, we’ll pause for a moment to take a look at some of the stories that have hit the headlines in the past.
Here are 5 of our favourites:
Feng shui for football
This story appeared in 2003, highlighting how some UK football teams were bringing in Feng Shui professional, Paul Darby Feng. to reconfigure their grounds. Mr Darby had already worked in sports grounds for many years after he was approached by the Football Association when cup finals were being played at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium while Wembley was undergoing redevelopment.
Cow caught after 3 months on the run
This silly season most certainly had legs, running for almost 3 months until September 2011. Yvonne escaped from a farm in Bavaria, just before she would have been sent for slaughter… did she sense where she was headed?! Whether she did or not, her high profile status meant that instead of going for the chop, she was bought by an animal sanctuary where she could see out her remaining days in peace.
The biggest breakfast
Forget the Big Breakfast (ah the good old 90s TV to wake up to!)… this one from 2018 is all about Pete Doherty, the Libertines front man, wolfing down a whopping 8,000 calorie breakfast. I mean, this really is scraping the barrel of what qualifies as “news” doesn’t it?!
Stoned sheep on a drug-fuelled rampage
Who’d have even thought it?! After the remains of an illegal cannabis factory were fly-tipped on a Welsh village road in 2016, sheep were causing havoc by breaking into homes and getting killed by cars as they stumbled about in what appears to be a druggy haze…!
Victor Meldrew found in space
The Sun newspaper excelled itself in 2005 when the front page was splashed with the story that the face of character Victor Meldrew from TV programme “One Foot in the Grave” had been spotted in space.
We look forward to the delights in store for this silly season… enjoy the summer holidays everyone!