A Stranger's London
Ladies hide from the holy man
Women were hastily ushered out of sight last week as a holy man from India strode through Heathrow Airport.For the leader of the Hindu Swaminarayan Fellowship is not allowed to look on the opposite sex and they too must keep their distance: no only nearer than 10ft.
His Divine Holiness Shree Pramukh Swaml had flown from Bombay - in his own compartment, safe from stewardesses - and everyone else had to get off first just in case a lady passenger caught his eye.
When he entered the arrival terminal 22 of his orange-clad disciples formed a mobile human screen around him. The police and airport officials helped to keep temptation out of the way, hurrying on ahead and urging women passengers and staff to step out of his path and look the other way.
Potatoes dumped to push up prices
Thousands of tons of top quality new potatoes are being dumped or fed to pigs to force up prices. Last week the government was facing embarrassing questions over the intervention of the Potato Marketing Board.By the end of last week the Board would have spent about £500,000 on English potatoes that would have been destined for supermarkets. Instead, 12,000 tons have been sprayed with dye then disposed of.
Shoppers have seen prices tumbling to the lowest level for years and the Board claimed its intervention was necessary to protect farmers during a temporary glut in home grown potatoes.
The Board said last night: "We dislike having to intervene in this way, but it's the only course we can take to ensure that prices are kept at a realistic level."
Op in bedroom saves woman
A doctor performed an emergency operation in a woman's bedroom to bring her back from the dead after a heart attack.Dr David Morrison cut open her chest and massaged her heart with his hands after all other methods failed.
Divorcee Mella Quinn, 38, whose heart had stopped for more than an hour, was conscious in hospital in Manchester, and is expected to recover fully.
Dr Morrison said it was unprecedented for someone to survive such a stoppage without brain damage.
He had used the method 12 times but only twice successfully.
Plumb crazy
A wife was delighted to find a new bathroom suite installed at her home. But the plumbers had been working in the wrong house. The £450 suite was meant for a neighbour.Nadine thought it was a surprise birthday present when she arrived home to find the new suite - and her old cast iron bath dumped in the garden.
Now the couple are negotiating with the company who installed the suite to see who pays. But Nadine's husband Ian, 21, can see the funny side.
He said at the house in Fitzwilliam, Yorks: "When I arrived home I just sat on the side of the bath and howled with laughter."
The couple were out when the plumbers arrived. They picked up the key from a neighbour. A spokesman for the bathroom company said: "We are hoping to make arrangements which will suit all sides."
Your husband's a woman
A judge has told a nurse that her husband was a WOMAN.Despite a sex-change operation, he had been born female - and in the eyes of the law that was what he remained.
Divorce court Judge Sir Jonathan Clarke granted 36-year-old Sandra Peterson an order ending her six-year marriage to a doctor.
But after the case Mrs Peterson said of her husband Edward: "He's as masculine as the next man... a kind, friendly man who is devoted to his hospital work."
Mrs Peterson said their love life had been "satisfactory". She would not say why their marriage had broken down, but insisted: "It had nothing to do with the fact that my husband had once been a woman."
Dr Peterson, 47, of Longthorpe, Peterborough, is a senior psychiatrist at Peterborough District Hospital. He had the sex-change operation before marrying Sandra.
The sex commentary
Tired businessman Paul Henry was transformed by the pills handed to him by a girl he invited to his hotel room. In moments his flagging virility was restored to such an extent that he began giving a running commentary on his performance with the young lady.The trouble was that the ecstatic antique dealer from Brighton could be heard all over Glasgow's Holiday Inn, a court heard. Guests in their night- clothes crowded the corridors and complained to the management about the lurid details emerging from Room 421.
"The aphrodisiac pills, known as black bombers, produced a passion he could not control," said Mr William Totten, defending, when Henry appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court, and admitted disorderly conduct and possessing drugs.
How macho man fails the family test
Don't pick a macho man if you want to have children. This surprising advice to women is contained in a new report from Munster University in Germany.Dr D.H. Hellhammer has discovered that men who are self-confident, assertive and demanding are much more liable to be infertile than timid, anxious males.
Infertility has usually been considered a female problem, but in recent years researchers have been investigating men in marriages which fail to produce children.
The results of the German study was based on three standard personality tests. The answers to these are compared to sperm production.
The researchers were surprised to discover that the husbands in infertile couples tended to be much more aggressive and successful than husbands in couples who had children.
Stress is being blamed for this male infertility. The researchers suggest that unassertive men suffer from much less stress than men who endeavour to control life around them.
