Attention Grabbing Headline Less Than Perfectly True

Swindon's small, yet most imperfectly formed media outlets were rocked by scandal yesterday after a headline appeared with no basis in fact whatsoever.

The heavy rain experienced in the last week through the town and most of the country gave eager local newspaper editors plenty of fodder to fill otherwise blank pages in midweek editions, one slipped up.

The Swindon Beaver Herald's Lunchtime Edition yesterday ran with 'Worst summer rain in 125 Years Of Living Memory' on it's frontpage. It took 45 minutes after the first copies had hit the news stands before Cub Reporter Jimmy Olsen, manning the switchboard, was flooded with calls (seven at once, or mostly within quick succession) saying no-one in Swindon had lived 125 years.

To the newspaper's credit (we don't give it much, not after it's legally been found guilty of mis-using the name 'newspaper', but we won't take them to court, everyone knows it's not a real paper) the Late Edition Final, sent out at 5pm, printed a small explanation headline, under the main, attention grabbing one, explaining that the 125 was simply used to emphasis the severity of the rain.

Swindon Centric Says ; The rain's been heavy, but it didn't flood, how bad can it be?

Rumours by a sub-editor of the SBH that a man lives in Ferndale Road who's reached the age of 127 by eating nothing but Brazil nuts and drinking weak Earl Grey tea with lemon have been discounted. He is believed to have been asleep through any major storms involving headline grabbing rainfall levels while in his toddler stage.