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29
Dec 2023
Looking Back: The funnier stories of 2023
It’s in the nature of news that a lot of the stories we read are, well, not very uplifting – robberies, redundancies and road accidents are not exactly mood-enhancers.
But there is another, lighter side to the news, so as we turn our backs on the last 12 months, we thought we’d take one last look at some of the funnier stories that raised a smile in 2023.
The horse that wasn’t a horse
Back in January, firefighters were called to rescue a horse from floodwaters near Ripon, only to discover it was a metal sculpture.
Group manager Bob Hoskins, who works for North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, tweeted:
The silhouette sculpture of a war-weary soldier and his horse was placed in the field in 2018 as part of a programme of events and commemorations to mark the centenary of the Great War.
The bossy steps
In April, a set of steps at Harrogate railway station came to national attention when All Creatures Great and Small star Samuel West tweeted that he felt “slightly harassed” by it.
The steps feature various injunctions, such as “Watch your step”, “Keep the left”, and “Don’t use mobile phones on stairs”, leading one X (formerly Twitter) user to call them a “seriously bossy set of steps”.
Several said they would be too worried about tripping to read all the messages.
A spokesperson for rail operator Northern said:
The £2,000 cowpat
In May, a fresh cowpat helped Masham woman Kathryn Driver hit paydirt.
Kathryn scooped £2,000 when she won Masham Community Office’s Cow Pat Competition, which was the surprise hit of the town’s coronation bank holiday celebrations.
The competition saw four cows (see main image), named for the occasion Storm Pooper, Harry Plopper, Poo Patrol and Daisy Dung, let out to roam around a fenced-off piece of land.
The land had been divided into squares, and tickets sold in advance at £1 per square. The winner would be whoever held the ticket corresponding to the square the first cowpat landed on.
Hundreds of people turned out to watch, and after nearly an hour’s wait it was Storm Pooper who produced the goods on Kathryn’s square. She said:
The event raised £5,000, which went towards the purchase of Masham Community Office’s building, The Old Police Station, retaining it as a community hub.
Hayley Jackson, community office manager, said:
Have we got nudes for you
More than 80 people shed their clothes in July to take part in the first ever naked walk around the Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park, near Masham.
The two-kilometre hike for over-18s was one of a series of fundraising Naked Heart Walks organised over the summer by British Naturism, which promotes naturism.
The walks at stately homes and gardens were advertised as opportunities to let people “feel the breeze on your skin as you raise money for the British Heart Foundation”.
Sasha Jackson-Brown, estate and operations manager at the Himalayan garden, said the venue’s remote location made it suitable and the event attracted a good turnout, even though “the weather could have been a bit warmer for them”.
The cow in the park
In August, people enjoying the sunny weather in the Valley Gardens in Harrogate were shocked to see a loose cow casually ambling towards the Magnesia Well Tea Room.
Dog-walker Lucy Emma Renshaw-Martin told the Stray Ferret she had no idea how the cow, which appeared to be a Holstein or Friesian, ended up in the park, which is nowhere near any fields.
That mystery was not solved by a statement issued later by North Yorkshire Police, which simply said that “the cow was reunited with its owner”.
However, Harrogate Writers’ Circle member Carole Keegan came up with a wordier response, penning a poem to mark the event.
The sleepless celebrity
TV personality Gyles Brandreth took to Twitter (now X) after enduring a sleepless night on a tilting bed in Harrogate.
The author and raconteur was appearing in September at the Royal Hall for his one-man show Gyles Brandreth Can’t Stop Talking.
At 7am the next morning, he tweeted:
The bed was so bad, he even tried to book into a different hotel in the dead of night, only to find it was full.
Mr Brandreth declined to name and shame the establishment to his 208,000 followers.
After his show, he hailed the “warm and wonderful audience” and said it was “a privilege to be on the stage that both Ken Dodd & Marlene Dietrich once appeared on. Not together. (Though wouldn’t that have been glorious?)”.
Gyles Brandreth at The Ivy in Harrogate - before his sleepless night.
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