Some gentle humour for your Friday afternoons

I'm more excited about the return of Deutschland 89 to our screens than the finale of WandaVision — and given I love WandaVision, that's really saying something! But I'm not here to talk about TV — I'm here to bring you this delightful gem from elsewhere.

I absolutely love local newspapers — in part because, when they're funded properly, they have the ability to do good quality, investigative journalism with a focus on issues taking place outside big cities. But the main reason is because they have a tendency to focus on ridiculous, long-running tiny local issues that don't matter at all in the grand scheme of things. I follow the Facebook group Angry People in Local Newspapers (also available via Twitter as angrypiln), which curates the best local newspaper content. (The 'angry people' in question are usually doing one of the following: a) pointing at potholes b) complaining about parking tickets or c) NIMBYish opposing some minor local devolopment application by demanding that local councillors 'think of the children' in situations where doing so is entirely irrelevant. There are also a lot of photos of local politicians wearing high vis jackets and lanyards, carrying clipboards.)

It was via this group that I first became aware of a particularly silly ongoing local saga, involving a man in Norwich (in the UK) illicitly running a Japanese restaurant from his home. Every time the council tried to catch him in the act, he simply denied that this restaurant existed, and the council continued to say they had insufficient evidence to prove anything. In spite of this, the dogged local newspaper managed — in a series of articles — to ascertain that this guy had:

Previously run a Japanese restaurant in a commercial premises

Had an active business Facebook page for a restaurant of the same name as the above, now with his home as the address. This Facebook page also listed a menu, prices, and details for collecting takeaway from the home address

Applied for and received a food safety and hygiene rating, for his home address

A journalist from the paper also ordered and collected a takeaway meal from the guy's house.

Every few months, the local paper runs another story along these lines, always accompanied by the same photo of the guy looking extremely smug, and a quote from him saying the restaurant doesn't exist.

Here is the latest version: Fresh questions over 'Japanese restaurant' in Norwich home. As I say, this can be added to 'I haven't turned my house into a restaurant', Norwich man claims, You can dine in or have a takeaway - fresh probe over Japanese 'restaurant' run from Norwich home, and Man who denies running restaurant from home given food hygiene rating. All these have been posted over the past two years, and at this point I demand a humorous British film about the saga.

Honestly, this whole thing has just made my day.