Recently by James Shepherd

BITTERLY cold temperatures during the big freeze brought "icebergs" to the English coast.

Walkers were stunned to see chunks of ice 20ft long and 3ft high drifting across the Irish Sea. It had frozen in places after daytime temperatures plunged as low as -8C.

The mini icebergs - known as Bergy Bits - were in Morecambe Bay, off Arnside, Cumbria.

A couple who live in their own time zone an hour ahead of everyone else say it is the secret to better health and lower bills.

John and Janys Warren stopped putting their clocks back in autumn four years ago - in the belief that darker days triggered his migraines.

Janys, 66, said: "We don't put the heating on until we get up and by then it is warmer anyway. The winter doesn't seem so long.

Experts believe changes in the body's biological clock can trigger severe headaches and John, 70, who used to suffer eight attacks a day, insists his condition has improved.

Their heating and lighting bills are also a third lower now.

John, of St Georges, Somerset, said: "It eased my headaches and it works for us. Some people think we're strange but we lead quiet lives."

Parliament is looking at extending British Summer Time for environmental, safety and tourism reasons.

It's a hundred billion dollar blunder.

A printing error with new hi-tech $100 bills in America has forced ­government printers to shut down production.

They have ­quarantined more than a billion of the notes as the Federal Reserve desperately tries to resolve the problem.

SCIENTISTS have invented beer mats for shy drinkers - that chat up girls for them.

The mats, made by students at Newcastle University, "talk" to each other and feature lines like: "If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together."

A DOG walker was left in agony after a hungry horse mistook her Christmas pudding hat for a holly bush - and tried to eat it.

Eileen Samme, 55, was kicked in the leg by the horse, leaving her in hospital with bruising.

It's not the ideal start to a season...

Madron FC have lost all 11 games of the season, let in 227 goals, including a 55-nil thrashing, and scored just twice. They struggle to field a full team but the club, near Penzance, refuse to give in.

Boss Alan Davenport, 68, said they are "probably the worst team in Britain" but added: "It would be easy to give up but we'll fight on."

Incredibly, there is another team below them in Mining League Division Two, after they had points deducted for not turning up to a match.

It was a terrible day to bury bad news - because on April 11, 1954, NOTHING happened.

In a century that saw two world wars, space exploration and the invention of TV and the internet, that desperately dull 24 hours was the mother of all slow news days.

French farmer Michel Rouyer has been fined for growing marijuana and feeding them to his ducks to rid them of worms.

A German appears to clamber stark naked into the boot of his car in a bizarre scene that has set the internet buzzing.

The man with no pants was captured by a roving camera helping to map the world for website Google Street View.

The baffling snap shows him climbing into a Mercedes at Mannheim, south-west Germany, while a dog sprawls on the driveway. One blogger kindly suggested he was simply wearing flesh-coloured shorts as he fixed a brake light.

But Google has removed the image to spare any further embarrasment.