A robber who held up a bookmakers with his girlfriend's Rampant Rabbit vibrator has been jailed.

Nicki Jex caught on CCTV

Nicki Jex, 27, concealed the sex toy in a carrier bag and pretended it was a gun during the raid on the Ladbrokes shop, in Leicester, on December 27 last year.

A member of staff at the Narborough Road branch handed over more than £600 in cash when he pointed it at her, Leicester Crown Court was told.

Jex, of Braunstone, pleaded guilty to the robbery, which was captured on a CCTV camera inside the shop.

Sentencing him to five years behind bars, Judge Philip Head said: "It's right to record that you did not have a firearm.

But you pretended you had and intended that those you confronted believed that you did, and it must have been truly terrifying for them at the time."

Tim Palmer, prosecuting, told the court: "The defendant pointed the item in the carrier bag at the cashier. She immediately assumed it to be a firearm.

"In fact, what was contained within the carrier bag was the defendant's girlfriend's vibrator."

The cashier handed over £613 in till contents and other money, the court was told.

But as he made his escape, the shop's only remaining customer, Wayne Vakani, followed him outside and tracked him to a nearby pub.

Thanks to the customer, the defendant's hat, worn in the robbery and containing his DNA, was discovered nearby.

When he was arrested he denied any involvement in the robbery, but changed his plea later.

I wonder if the "weapon" had been serviced and cleaned beforehand....

Giant Person Lands In Netherlands

Updated: 08:17, Wednesday August 08, 2007

A giant Lego man has been fished out of the sea in the Netherlands.

Is this just another Brit abroad?

The smiling effigy was spotted in the sea at the resort of Zandvoort.

Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5 metre (8 foot) tall plastic character, which has a yellow head and blue torso.

They placed it on the sand, where holidaymakers quickly gathered round.

"We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water," said a stall worker.

"It was a life-sized Lego toy."

"I saw the Lego toy floating towards the beach from the direction of England," she said.

"Nobody know what it is - or means."

Yori, a local man who works at the Skyline beach bar said: "Yeah, it was lying down ... and it was big, so I couldn't move it much 'cos it was too big for me.

"Some people .... put it up and now it's standing there and all people are making photos. That's nice. It's cool."

A nine-year-old boy has hatched a chick from a box of free-range eggs which his mother bought in a Suffolk supermarket.

The chick, named Celia, hatched three weeks after Miles Orford, of Great Ashfield, placed six free-range Cotswold Legbar eggs in an incubator.

His mother, Sarah Orford, said: "We've tried the same experiment with quail and duck eggs.

"None of the quail eggs hatched. We're still waiting to see what happens with the duck eggs."

Mrs Orford bought the eggs from her local Waitrose store.

"We read about someone who had done it with duck eggs and thought we'd experiment," she said.

"I have to say I was somewhat surprised. It's very interesting."

A fresh egg

How the egg came to be fertilised is not known.

Free-range egg farmer, Phillip Greenacre, told BBC news: "Well it could have happened by a rogue bird from a neighbouring farm or more likely a bird from within the farm that didn't get sexed properly."

Francine Raymond, of the Henkeepers' Association, said the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a fertilised and non-fertilised egg.

She told BBC news: "After about three weeks you wouldn't be able to hatch it - it was obviously a fresh egg."

I'll believe you'll agree this was a good find....

I haven't posted in a while. Ok here goes.

Something suitably daft as always...

ENGLISH: The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as rephrasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

:D