Mike Rutherford of the Motorists Association welcomed the decision to press charges.  ‘Roads have been getting away with it for far too long.  They smear themselves with oil and wet leaves and then spring out to catch our members unawares.  One minute you’re overtaking someone on a bend on the wrong side of double white lines and the next you’ve crashed head-on into some idiot coming the other way, it’s a disgrace.’

‘We’re not looking for custodial sentences here,’ he added, ‘as these roads have many dependents whose lives would be unfairly affected by their detention behind bars.  All we are asking for is justice and a promise from the M25 and the other roads that they will go completely straight in future.’

The first four blades in a pack are typically changed in between three days and a week while the fifth may be on the point of rusting before it is finally disposed of. But the ‘magic’ blade isn’t without its drawbacks, admit the researchers from Queen’s University, Belfast. Among its minus points are more cuts, worse razor burn and longer shaving times.

The team is now working on a project to establish why ‘empty’ toothpaste tubes can still produce enough toothpaste for up to eight further days of teeth cleaning if squeezed hard enough.

The 23 year old suspect provoked concern among Ryanair check-in staff by looking them straight in the eye as he claimed to have packed his case himself, hadn’t let it out of his sight and wasn’t carrying anything for anyone else. ‘Men never have anything to do with packing,’ said ticketing supervisor Gail Rogers, ‘Even when they travel alone, their mum or wife packs for them. It’s only terrorists and weirdos who pack their own case and keep it with them all the time.’

The man was later released without charge and allowed to continue their journey following the payment of a 150 per cent rebooking fee.

Far from having been kidnapped by traffickers as alleged by British newspapers, the bees said they had applied for work permits for the country where they were guaranteed an exotic pollen-filled environment that was everything the gangmasters at Rowse honey in the UK had ever promised and more.

‘After three miserable wet summers at home, enough was enough,’ commented one ex-pat bee, ‘although I wish we’d packed something other than these furry yellow and black uniforms, we just look overdressed out here’.

After months spent studying holidaymakers at airport check-in desks, researchers from the University of Strathclyde have concluded that swearing, smacking children and shouting at other passengers also helps locate missing items.

One traveller admitted: ‘It seemed hopeless until I lost my temper, tore off my jacket and ripped my inside pocket open and there was my passport. I’d looked in that pocket about eight times before and it was in there all the time! What am I like?’

Specially trained airport staff are being brought in to offer behaviour-supporting counselling to frenziedly self-searching passengers with key phrases like ‘It must be in there somewhere’, ‘Have you tried that pocket?’ and ‘When did you last have it?’

The research also found that accusing other family members of deliberately moving items or leaving them behind can also speed the discovery of missing essentials, usually in the first place that was searched. Professor Dougal Saltire is advising all travellers who have mislaid anything to furiously rummage through baggage and pat their pockets repeatedly. He said: ‘We’ve no idea why but it seems to work in the end.’

He went on: ‘What seems at first glance to be a hysterical, chaotic outburst is in fact a genetically imprinted possession location process that can be traced back to at least the Romans and the many lost valuables that they recovered and did not mislay in pottery urns to be found many hundreds of years later.’

The research group is also recommending that departing travellers follow their other instinct to go round their homes and check taps are off at least six times, with electrical plugs requiring a minimum of eight inspections by at least two members of the family.

Technical advances in British solutions to the global energy crisis will be driven by the UK’s unique micro-climates, says Professor Tom Choularton of University of Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences.

He explained: ‘Drizzle, which occurs nowhere else in such natural abundance, gives us three ways to generate power. First, it is a relentless source of downwardly vertical hydro energy to drive small turbines.

‘At the same time, the spent drizzle provides a penetrating chill for heat-exchange units. Finally, the small amount of electricity that remains in drizzle droplets from the positively-charged source clouds is farmed and channelled into AA batteries that are then sold at car boot sales.

‘In Manchester, we are fitting lamp-posts and dozens of other outdoor freestanding structures with the tiny but complex drizzle power units that will keep our streets illuminated, day and night.

‘We will soon have enough gloom power for all the city’s street lights, with enough to spare to sell to other European cities that have no natural gloom, like Barcelona and Rome.’

In a parallel project based in the city centre, sonic capture is being used to see if sound waves from traffic noise and the population’s constant whining and bragging can be converted into another source of energy.

A trial of the sound abstraction system at a derby match between City and United at Old Trafford had to be abandoned after an announcement that both Liverpool and Arsenal were winning away caused a sonic power surge that blew all the floodlights.

'Some of my best friends are able-bodied'

A growing epidemic of disability has been uncovered after a survey of parking needs at shops and railway stations found that over 80 per cent of Britain’s drivers cannot walk more than five yards to a cash machine or shop entrance.

‘The number of openly able-bodied people is in decline and we are seeing the emergence of a new group, the ‘hidden disabled’,’ said Dr Sarah McKendricks of Westminster University.  ‘These people refuse to let their disabilities blight their everyday lives, and are characterised by a fierce pride in their independence which can make them angry and even violent if anyone tries to help them.’

Researchers tried to talk to a number of these newly-disabled people, but they all drove off quickly saying they’d ‘only been there for a minute’.

'Give me a reverse Michael Jackson, and quick!'

A Burnley tanning salon run by a retired farmer has been forced to close after a third woman drowned in its fast-tan trough in less than a week.  Sharon Thwaites failed to emerge from Tan-tastic’s sheep dip-style immersion treatment on Monday.  Police divers later recovered the 21-year-old’s body from the bottom of the tank.

Bob Bright, proprietor of Tan-tastic, told police he hit on the idea of the tanning trough after a cock-up on his farm saw 200 sheep blacked-up rather than disinfected.

Sharon’s mother Irene said that her daughter will be missed, but they were sure it is ‘how she would have wanted to go’.  Sharon is lying in state at her mother’s home so friends and family can visit one last time and comment admiringly on her tan.  ‘She looks lovely,’ sobbed Irene.  ‘No streaks at all.’