Captain Moonlight: The Captain's Catch-up Service

WELCOME, once again, to the weekly news digest dedicated to exploring the furthest reaches of the human experience and to proving that, yes, it really is a funny old world . . . An old man carrying a placard proclaiming The End of the World is Nigh was knocked down and killed while crossing a road in Barcelona . . . Fifteen mourners at a funeral died after eating the dead man's dog in Nsukka, Nigeria . . . Max, the parrot, who spent all day imitating a telephone ringing, was buried with an old telephone in Chichester, Sussex . . . Carlisle United football fans can now be buried in a coffin painted in the club's colours . . . Undertaker Harold Plinburg was rushed to hospital in Brooklyn after a corpse he was embalming came back to life. 'None of my friends in the funeral business has ever had anything like this happen,' said Harold . . . A tannoy announcement at Gatwick Airport failed to trace the owner of a lost hearing aid . . . Burglar Philip Fletcher used a blind accomplice to act as look-out when he raided a boy's club in Hereford. Police tiptoed past Robert Lowe to catch Fletcher red-handed . . . Hero Jacques Deveau, who saved five children from a house fire in Nice, was arrested for picking the pocket of the police commissioner as he received a bravery medal . . . And finally, you will remember the poor okapi at Copenhagen Zoo which died when the sound of a Wagnerian opera from a nearby park caused it to hyperventilate. Well, the body has now disappeared from a museum. Officials believe it was stolen by students and barbecued.