Article published: 9:33 AM Wednesday December 23, 2009
Kiwis' crazy antics of 2009
A robber who leaves his name and address, a memorial service for a man who isn't dead and a teacher who poses nude for Penthouse just to annoy her cheating boyfriend.
Where else in the world but New Zealand.
Kiwis can always be relied on to produce some of the world's quirkiest, funniest and downright ridiculous news. And 2009 was no exception, especially with the debacle over a misplaced decimal point that handed $10 million cash to an opportunistic Kiwi couple who quickly fled overseas.
Here are the highlights of a wacky year:
.. William Stewart escaped the clutches of police for 100 days. Stewart, a rough and ready Michael Bolton lookalike, seemed to enjoy his status, at one stage stealing a pie from a farm kitchen and engraving a thank you note into the table from "Billy The Hunted One". He was jailed for his antics but not before inspiring a song, a T-shirt range and Facebook fan page.
.. Failed servo owner Leo Gao couldn't believe his eyes when, in April, Westpac accidentally added extra zeros to his overdraft facility . The Chinese New Zealander skipped the country with millions of dollars overnight, taking his girlfriend on a gambling and spending spree across Asia. Unsurprisingly, they haven't been seen since. The bank worker wasn't so lucky, losing her job after the embarrassing glitch.
.. A man vying for the title of New Zealand's most incompetent criminal left his name and contact details with a shop before robbing it and fleeing. The man - a regular customer of the music shop in Christchurch - ordered a CD before grabbing handfuls of banknotes from the till with four surveillance cameras trained on him. "It was totally comical," the store manager said.
.. When Kiwi primary schoolteacher Rachel Whitwell decided to pose nude for Australian Penthouse she wasn't thinking of the fame or the fortune. She just wanted to annoy her cheating boyfriend. But the ploy backfired badly, with saucy pics of Whitwell frolicking in a spa splashed across New Zealand papers, leaving both her career and her relationship in tatters.
.. A deadpan joke about the safety of eating overheated meat pies catapulted a Kiwi cop into internet super-stardom. Policeman Guy Baldwin was captured on camera interviewing a late-night carjacker who was trying to claim he was merely off to buy a meat pie at the local service station. Baldwin's witty reply was: "That pie has probably been in the warming drawer for about 12 hours. It will be thermo-nuclear - always blow on the pie." Unfortunately the young crim didn't get the joke.
.. A beloved family cat had an extra chilly brush with death after his owners accidentally shut him in the freezer for 19 hours . Sarah Crombie found Krillen the cat lying stiff and semi-conscious on a bag of dog food when she went to get a loaf of bread out of the freezer. The moggy, who had slipped into the top-loading freezer unnoticed the night before, was semi-frozen and hypothermic but purred loudly with relief.
.. Meat-flavoured chocolate might not be everyone's idea of delicious, but a Kiwi chocolatier claims her salami-tinged treats are just that. Sweet maker Hanna Frederick developed venison chocolate truffles to feed dozens of meat lovers at New Zealand's Meat Industry Association conference. Made from a blend of dark chocolate and ground-up salty dried meat, the morsels were described as "heavenly", much to the disgust of many.
.. A canine was in the dog box after driving his owner's ute into the front of a cafe . Wilco, a Staffordshire Ridgeback-cross, proved why dogs should never be left alone in a running vehicle when his paw slipped the column gear change into drive. The ute edged forward 15 metres before crunching into the front doors of a cafe, causing thousands of dollars in damage.
.. A man has become so obsessed with seeing his name in print that he lies regularly to get it there. Andrew Prieditis is from small town New Zealand but the self-confessed letter-writing addict has been published in more than 80 newspapers globally . His trick is to supply a false local address and he has no qualms about duping newspapers. "I just love it, seeing my name there," he said by way of explanation.
.. The condolences were sent and the memorial service was planned. The only problem: Peter Claridge wasn't actually dead. The Kiwi man got the shock of a lifetime to hear his death was being mourned throughout his hometown when he was, in fact, alive and kicking. The rumour was started by the town's misinformed and very embarrassed mayor. Claridge didn't mind though, saying he'd been planning to pop along to the commemorations.
.. The recession was responsible for many an oddity in 2009. For one, Kiwi men were more likely than ever to get "the snip" on their most intimate assets as a reaction to the financial squeeze, and prescriptions for contraceptives have also skyrocketed. The big "R" also kept sheep numbers down and sales of sexy lacy underwear sets up, apparently as a cheap thrill in all the doom and gloom.
.. A curious baby seal shuffled more than 100 kilometres across New Zealand farmland after an overexcited fishing expedition. The super-travelling youngster was spotted by a shocked Kiwi farmer early one morning as he trudged his way over to his milking sheds. Unfazed, the animal took a long nap in a paddock before being caught by conservationists and driven back to the ocean.
.. It supported the bare bums of his pub patrons for 15 years and Trev Inwood wants it back . The Kiwi publican offered a $100 bar tab for the return of a plastic toilet seat stolen from his Christchurch tavern in August. Inwood says he was shocked someone had opted to steal the bog-standard seat but conceded there "might have be a bit of nostalgia". "Some bugger must have unbolted it from the back and taken it out of the boozer with no-one seeing it". Four months on, Inwood is still waiting.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/kiwis-crazy-antics-2009-3317432
0 comments:
Post a Comment