The Daily Splash

The Tour of Britain 2009 passed through Jesmond this week on the stage 2 from Darlington to NewcastleGateshead. The Daily Splash was on hand to capture the moment when Kai Reus of the Rabobank team passed through Jesmond Vale just about a minute ahead of the peloton with about 4k to go. He hung on to the lead and eventually crossed the line next to the Baltic about 10 seconds ahead. Click for more pictures

Our exclusive picture captures the moment when gorgeous Maisie woke from a snooze on New Year’s Eve* to discover a strange man next to her wrapped in an old blanket.

The blanket looked bad enough, although I’m sure it was made by someone’s granny so I dont want to say too much, but from the smell of the thing i would think it had not been washed since the late 19th Century.

Clearly Al didn’t seem to mind the pong and in fact made himself cosy in the dreadful garment. It was like being transported forward in time to 2045, albeit a 2045 in which Al had bagged himself a much younger stunna.

*The delay in the publication of this story has nothing to do with the amount of lawyers that have been involved in the discussions around suitability for publication.

Flower Bertenshaw, former lecturer at Houghall College in Durham, was due to join the space race today. She is pictured below trying on her new NASA-designed space suit prior to leaving from a custom-designed launch-pad in Jesmond Dene. Press photographers and TV crews were on hand to capture the moment this morning when, at just before dawn, Flower appeared, followed by owner Catherine, to set off on the historic journey. Pausing only to sniff some old dog poo, attempt to steal one of the photographers’ sandwiches, dry hump her owner’s leg for three minutes, harass Henrietta the cat, disappear into the bushes to chase a rabbit, thoughtfully alert the neighbours to the presence of the postman and jump into the stagnant waters of the Dene to chase a stick, she donned the suit and was secured into position on the launch platform.

At 4.15am precisely, the launch went ahead as planned , with the rocket’s trajectory calculated to place the capsule containing Flower in a high-Earth orbit, where she was scheduled to carry out several important experiments, including testing the potency of dog fart in space, and trialling an anti-gravity dog hair remover. Sadly for  the Jesmond Space Agency (JESA) the multi-million pound investment was wasted when Flower was discovered later asleep in a pile of dog hair on Simon’s pillow and not, as had been planned, in space.

There were unprecedented scenes of excitement today when the latest “Cow Parade” exhibition was unveiled in Jesmond Vale.

Several groups of inebriated students had already tried and failed to steal the life sized mirror ball cow when it was unveiled without the expected presence of fellow owners Elton John, Mother Teresa, Madonna and Sir Trevor MaCDonald. A local resident, who gave his name as Salguod Nomis, said that the whole concept was causing chaos on the streets. “We don’t really need any more cows round here”, he said, “you only have to look in the windows to see the whole place is infested – I have been trying to sneak a few into the back lane on bin day every few weeks but they keep on coming back.”

As everyone is surely aware, the curator of the show is renowned local bovine obsessive Dr Catherine Bertenshaw, who also claims to have discovered a new method of encouraging cows to give up more milk – she talks to them!

Despite strong local opposition to the claims (Dr Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University has finally read her thesis and gone on record to say “load of old bollocks!”) Dr Bertenshaw has published a new book on the subject, entitled “I love only Moo”, which enables enthusiasts to talk to animals “like that Dr Doolittle does on the Discovery Channel.”

All this be as it may, the exhibition will be open from September 12^th 2008 until September 13^th 2008 and then will hopefully be taken on a world tour.