If you regularly lift more than half your body weight, doctors advise that you’d best get your heart checked. Young and healthy lifters are in danger of torn aortas if they have an undiagnosed aneurysm or an enlargement of the aorta.

Unfortunately, death often occurs because doctors do not think to look for a torn aorta when fit young men show up in the emergency room with chest pains.

The citizens of Lyme Regis in the UK have hurled dead eels at one another for some 30 odd years. It’s a much-anticipated event (conger cuddling, it’s called) of ‘Lifeboat Week’ with funds raised going to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Two teams of nine each stand on flowerpots while a large eel on a rope is utilized to knock as many off as possible, with the last man still standing declared the winner.

However, and there’s always a ‘however’, the animal rights people heard about it. Or should I say, the dead animal rights people.

This year, a buoy was substituted. Needless to say, the traditional spectacle lost some of its charm.