Walliams to fight nits in next fundraising challenge

HE'S swum the English Channel and cycled the length of Britain to raise money for Sport Relief.

Now comedian and actor David Walliams is preparing for his least ambitious fundraising challenge yet – a two-hour Boggle marathon to help find a cure for nits.

Mr Walliams, 41, will play simultaneously on three Boggle trays against nine other players in his living room in South London at the end of June.

He will be restricted to two toilet breaks and three refreshment stops during his 120-minute wordplay extravaganza, which he hopes will raise up to £50 towards research into nits (also known as head lice – see picture).

Mr Walliams has been a fan of Boggle since he was a teenager.

The game involves 16 dice, with letters printed on all six sides.

The dice are shaken inside a box so they fall randomly into a tray, and players are then challenged to make as many words as they can in three minutes from the letters facing upwards.

Mr Walliams said: “It's going to be tough. I've been training intensively for this challenge for eight months - basically by occasionally watching Countdown when it happens to be on when I'm at home.

“Swimming the English Channel was hard, but if a J and a Z come up in the same game of Boggle, this could be harder.”

He added: “It will all be worth it, though, because nits are really gross.”

Find out if you are a Facebook 'Like Whore'

FACEBOOK founder Mark Zuckerberg has threatened to publish a list of the world's top 100 “Like Whores” – the users of his social networking site who most frequently 'like' other people's comments or status updates.

Earlier this year, Facebook published the results of the 2011 Like Census, which revealed that 17-year-old girls from Florida were the world's most prolific Like Whores, while 82-year-old men from North Korea were least likely to be Like Whores.

Now, though, Mr Zuckerberg is threatening to go one step further by identifying the individuals who most flagrantly flaunt their 'likes' and put out on a first status update.

On his own Facebook page this morning, Mr Zuckerberg outed the world's top three Like Whores.

Heading the list was Candy Ramirez, a waitress from Miami, Florida, who has liked 13,000 comments, 8,000 status updates, 3,500 links, 1,200 pictures and 850 videos in the last year.

In second was Teagan Flanagan, a cheerleader from Detroit, Michigan, who once spent a whole weekend messaging her Facebook friends, asking them to post what they were having for dinner, so she could 'like' every one of their status updates.

And in third was Ryan Foyle, a hairdresser from Perth, Western Australia, who employs three people to 'like' comments on his behalf while he's sleeping, and who has taken out like insurance worth $3million in case he breaks his fingers.

Mr Zuckerberg also revealed there is a simple formula for working out whether somebody is a Like Whore or not.

If, in the last year, you have liked comments or status updates in at least three of the following five categories, you are a Like Whore.

A picture/video of a baby or a description of a baby doing something cute

A link to a YouTube video of someone you don't know doing something foolish

A friend's wistful/poetic take on everyday life, along the lines of “Live every day like it's your last”

A friend's humorous take on a topical news/celebrity story, usually involving a pun

A friend's revelation about the completion of a simple domestic duty, e.g. “I just baked a cake!”, “I just cooked a satisfactory meal!”, or “I just put up some wallpaper!” etc

Why not generate a transient feeling of warmth and well-being by 'Liking' this story on Facebook and sharing it with your friends?

How do you tell if a pig is lying?

A NEW “miracle” truth serum could be scrapped – after scientists admitted they could not be sure whether laboratory pigs injected with the drug were lying or not.

Sixty sows and 55 boars were given the groundbreaking Alpha Veritas drug at the University of Michigan's biochemistry laboratory earlier this month.

They were then asked a series of questions, ranging from basic requests for their names and addresses, to more complex interrogation about their political and religious views, and the whereabouts of big bombs.

But the results were disappointing.

“They just grunted”, said Professor Laslo Bodarovic, who spearheaded the development of Alpha Veritas.

“We tried administering the drug in various doses, at different times of the day, when the pigs were hungry, full, bored, playful, happy, depressed - but whatever we did, the results were the same.

“We've asked everybody we know, even people who are really good with animals and not at all afraid of pigs, but nobody has been able to say for sure whether they are telling the truth or not.”

Alpha Veritas was developed thanks to $6billion of funding from The Pentagon, which wants a foolproof truth serum to use on terror suspects.

But if a second round of interviews with Parakeets does not yield better results, the drug could be scrapped altogether.

“We hope it doesn't come to that,” said Prof Bodarovic.

“People should remember there were similar difficulties when the original Polygraph machine was first tested on crane flies back in the 1920s.

“It would be a sad day for America if we gave up the progress we've made with Alpha Veritas, even if the drug has cost $10million-a-grunt so far.”

Your Dreams are my Nightmares

AN exhaustive guide of things to do while other people are telling you about their dreams has been published today.

Your Dreams Are My Nightmares – a 258-page handbook by Danish psychologist, Professor Eirik Wendel - contains more than 600 suggestions for ways to pass the time while your companions are boring you witless with vague recollections of things they imagined in their sleep.

The book's introduction says: “As soon as your friend or loved one says anything along the lines of “What you just said really reminds me of this dream I had last night”, you must immediately zone out, or risk getting sucked in to a cyclone of unspeakable boredom, which could last from 20 seconds to 12 minutes, depending on how dull the other person is.

“Once you have zoned out, take refuge in the 600-plus activities listed in this handbook, any one of which would be infinitely more rewarding than listening to your friend for a single second.”

Prof Wendel's top 10 suggestions include: counting to 20 in French, thinking about the best physical features of an attractive celebrity, miming the use of a yo-yo, painting an egg, and swearing internally.

Scientists, poets and philosophers have struggled for centuries to explain why other people's dreams are so boring, but Prof Wendel offers an analogy by way of explanation.

He said: “Imagine a friend telling you he's just seen the most amazing film in the history of cinema.

“Briefly, you'd be captivated, but your interest would soon fade when your friend was unable to explain the plot coherently, describe any of the film's sequences or name any of the actors involved.

“And your interest would disappear completely when he informed you that neither you nor anybody else in the world would ever be able to see this film.”

Earlier this year, it was revealed that US military officials tell inmates at Guantanamo Bay about their dreams as an alternative to waterboarding.

One former inmate said: “I'd survived all their torture methods - sleep deprivation, white noise, waterboarding - but when this one guard started telling me about this dream he'd had, in which his mother-in-law was taking him to a puppet show, but then she turned into his former geography teacher, and then all of a sudden he was in a post office but all of the stamps kept turning into butterflies and flying off, I just cracked, and without meaning to I started revealing that I'd hidden 3kg of explosives inside Charlie Sheen.”

History Channel is history

THE History Channel is to fold after its producers discovered that everything that ever happened during World War Two has already been made into a television programme.

Sunday evening's 7pm broadcast – Rudolf Hess and his Mysterious Aversion to Tinsel – will be the last.

The channel's director, Clive Thorpe, admitted ideas had been running low for some time.

He said: “The whole of last week was spent throwing around World War Two buzzwords, like Eva Braun, U-Boat and Spam, but we couldn't come up with anything.

“I even suggested doing a show about how The Blitz affected the flourishing jodhpur trade, but it turns out we've done that. Twice.

“When I think of some of the classic programmes we produced in the glory years of the early 2000s – such as Great Paper Planes of the Battle of Britain, Stalingrad: A Right Kerfuffle, and Would Hitler Have Liked Marmite? - I do get a bit misty-eyed.”

Asked whether his channel could have considered covering any of the years of human history either side of 1939 to 1945, Mr Thorpe replied: “No, absolutely not.”

Sherlock star's 'bagging area' hell

"EVERYWHERE I go, they tell me I'm an unexpected item in a bagging area."

Those were the traumatised words of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch, who last night lifted the lid on 18 months of torture at the hands of bland recorded messages.

At the media launch of his new book - "I'm not an unexpected item in a bagging area, I'm Benedict" - Mr Cumberbatch told journalists how the ordeal began.

He said: “It started just after I'd finished filming the first series of Sherlock.

“I'd boarded a train from London Paddington and when I got off at Reading I heard this voice telling me to mind the gap between the train and platform.

“There was nothing unusual in that, but the voice kept repeating the message during the whole of my journey home.

“Eventually it stopped and I thought nothing more of it.

“But about three weeks later, I was walking my Lurcher in the Forest of Dean when I heard another voice, still recognisably human but just as detached and monotone as the one before, telling me really insistently that the number I'd called could not be recognised.

“I ran home and I'm sad to say I've never seen my dog since.

“But the worst of it has been the last few months, when I've had this horrible message telling me I'm an unexpected item in a bagging area.

“I hear it wherever I am – at the zoo, in the bath, on the set of Sherlock, everywhere.

“I don't know what bagging area it's referring to, and I don't know what it wants me to do about it.

“It's so hard to deal with and I just want it to stop.

“I'm tired of feeling so helpless, so powerless. I know there must be other victims out there, and I hope by speaking out I can at least let them know they are not alone.”

If you've been bullied by automated messages, help is probably available. Just try googling it or something.

Murdoch: "My son would look like Trayvon Martin"

RUPERT Murdoch caused a fresh sensation at the Leveson Inquiry today, by claiming that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin.

Mr Murdoch made the claim in response to a completely unrelated question about corporate governance at News International.

With a crocodile tear rolling down his cheek, Mr Murdoch said: “I heard what Obama said and it's a damned cheek.

“There's no way his son would look like Trayvon; but if I had a boy, he would be Trayvon's spitting image.”

When Labour MP Tom Watson suggested that Mr Murdoch already had a son, called James, Mr Murdoch replied mysteriously: “Do I?” before laughing maniacally and flying off through an open window.