A dead cert

WHEN Frank Hughes' former colleagues read that their 80-year-old friend had passed away, they turned up at his funeral to pay their last respects. But, hours after bidding him farewell, they spotted Mr Hughes walking around town - looking very much alive.

When a friend saw the newspaper notice announcing the death, he had phoned Mr Hughes' old coach firm in North Yorkshire to query the address given in the notice and had been told that it was the correct address.

Mr Hughes said: " I had seen the notice in the paper myself and eventually I started to twig what was happening. I phoned the traffic manager. I told him it was Frank and that I was just phoning to say I was very much alive and kicking... he said 'well, whose funeral have we all just been to then?'"

Frank Hughes' father's funeral it was, had a big turn-out of mourners.

- The Independent

A Good Natter

GOSSIP is good for you, according to new study published in the journal Human Nature by two anthropologists, Kevin Kniffin (University of Wisconsin) and David Wilson (State University of New York).

Gossip can stamp out bad behaviour, strengthen friendships and circulate important information not available anywhere else. The study found that we spend from a fifth to two-thirds of our daily conversation gossiping, with men indulging as much as women.

Informal chat, often behind people's backs, provided detailed information and an informal "handbook" on how to behave.

Men were found to gossip for just as long and on the same subjects as women, but men were more egocentric, talking for two-thirds of the time about themselves, while women did so for only a third, preferring to talk about other people.

Male and female gossip also sounded different, women were more animated in their storytelling, piling on detail and encouraging feedback from listeners.

The authors believe that when people huddled to share information about an absent person, it is a deep-seated instinct, the equivalent of "social grooming" among our monkey ancestors.

Primates pick fleas from each other, even when clean, helping with relationship-building, group bonding, clarifying social status and reinforcing shared values.

- The Independent

White Native

RESIDENTS of a Masai village in Kenya have reacted with astonishment to claims by an eccentric English businessman that he plans to give up his life in Britain and move there as an honorary tribesman.

Graham Pendrill, 57, a millionaire antiques dealer plans to exchange his 12-bedroom house in Britain for a mud hut. He was seduced by their way of life after being treated to their hospitality during a holiday last October and plans to return there permanently as a "white Masai".

Mr Pendrill said that he was invited to stay in the village after giving a lift to a group of Masai warriors in his car when he drove past them during a thunderstorm.

He said he had met chieftains, had animals slaughtered in his honour and had been given a tribal name - "Siparo", which means "brave one". He has caused a stir among his neighbours in Bristol by ditching his western clothes and wearing a thing-length tribal gown.

So enamoured was he with the Masai way of life that he has decided to sell his 1.2 million pound home and leave his girlfriend and elderly mother behind in Britain.

However, his assumption that he will be able to return to the village as an honorary tribesman was queried by Masai elders, who said it would breach tribal protocol if he turned up to live there uninvited.

- Daily Telegraph

Child prodigies

YINAN WANG, the 14-year-old boy who clinched a place at Oxford University last week, will be the last child prodigy to study there.

Despite an almost perennial flurry of headlines on children barely in their teens being offered places, the university is considering an unprecedented blanket rule on minimum ages for undergraduates.

"The admissions executive is in discussions around whether we should introduce a minimum age of 17 for undergraduates," said Ruth Collier, a spokesperson for admissions to Oxford.

"We have been pushed to consider it, not because of concerns about whether it is psychologically healthy for children to study here, but because of child protection laws which have come into play this year for the first time."

Children can no longer live in student accommodation because the university could not carry out a criminal record check on every other undergraduate sharing the same premises.

"Suddenly we can't offer one-to-one tutorials , while the people who do administration in our colleges have to spend a great deal of time making absolutely sure they are not inadvertently placing a child in a potentially dangerous situation with anyone who hasn't had a criminal records check," she added.

The 14-year-old is one of the youngest students at Oxford since Ruth Lawrence, who became its youngest ever maths graduate in 1982, aged 12.

However, Wang overcame the additional challenge of being unable to speak English when he arrived in the UK two years ago. He will read material sciences at Corpus Christi after gaining 3 A-grades this month.

- The Observer