Journalistic mysteries - and crabs

Some mornings I walk to work. I've never managed to get my time below an hour, but I keep trying.

Other mornings I catch the tube at Sloane Square, and I've never managed to understand what lunatic at News International thinks it's a good idea to have people hawking copies of The Sun there. They've been doing it for months, and I'll kiss Rupert Murdoch's arse if anyone can show it could conceivably pay.

For those of you unfamiliar with British journalism I should explain that The Sun is cunningly crafted for people whose lips move - very slowly - when they read. Independent research reveals that it has a drivel-to-news ratio of 3,073.7 to 1.

Sloane Sqaure is surrounded by some of the very richest parts of the very rich borough of Kensington and Chelsea. There must be a few illiterates in Chelsea, and the ways of the newspaper industry are mysterious but what are they playing at?

To call that bad targeting is the understatement of the decade. Especially when twenty yards away you can get a free copy of Metro, which is shallow stuff, but a rock of intellectual gravitas next to The Sun.

Now on to something of an altogether higher order sent me by my old pal Glenmore, the international boulevardier and intelligence pundit.

A lawyer boarded a plane in New Orleans with a box of frozen crabs and asked a blonde stewardess to take care of them for him.

She took the box and promised to put it in the crew's refrigerator. He advised her that he was holding her personally responsible for them staying frozen, mentioning in a very haughty manner that he was a lawyer, and proceeding to rant about what would happen if she let them thaw out.

Needless to say, she was not best pleased.

Shortly before landing in New York, she addressed the cabin on the intercom: "Would the gentleman who gave me the crabs in New Orleans please raise your hand?"

Not one hand went up ... so she took them home and ate them.

Two lessons here:

1. Lawyers aren't as smart as they think they are.

2. Blondes aren't as dumb as most folks think.