Fisherman Leon Wright and his wife, Loralee, found a 32lb piece of ambergris, which is vomited by sperm whales to rid their stomachs of solid objects. Ambergris — nicknamed Moby Sick — has a solid, fatty feel and will fetch around £13 per gram from perfume manufacturers.
Blunt speaker of the week A Berlin woman says she’s been forced to take a job in a brothel for “mature ladies” because her husband has lost his sex drive. “I like sex,” Adelheid Kran, 58, told the Ananova news agency. “I like it a lot, but my husband Guenther has no appetite any more and does it about once a year. I saw an ad in the paper. Guenther’s not thrilled, but I can’t hem myself in. I only have sex with the men I like. In a job like this, you have to keep a certain standard.”
Tantrum of the week A sulking husband has spent 15 years living in a tree after a row with his wife. Kapila Pradhan, 45, moved into jungle in the Indian state of Orissa, but last week his mother has appealed to him to come down. He plans to stay put, reports The Daily Telegraph, but might be tempted home by a hot meal. “Since I left I have hardly had any cooked food,” he says.
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Wince of the week Chinese rail travellers are wearing adult nappies because holiday trains are so crowded, reports the China Daily newspaper. There’s not even standing room left in the corridors as 120m migrant workers head home for this week’s Chinese new year celebrations, so it’s almost impossible to get to the lavatory. “During the peak travel period last year, some passengers even became deranged on their journeys because of the conditions and jumped out of the carriages,” says the paper. Now supermarkets are reporting a 50% increase in nappy sales.
Optimist of the week Lovestruck Marc Lachance is searching for the girl of his dreams, but he’s got a big job on his hands. All he knows is that she’s called Sabine, and she lives in Belgium — which makes her one of 3,700. “I was shocked it’s such a popular name,” says Marc, a Canadian, who met Sabine on holiday in Cuba and has already written to all the Sabines in Brussels. “We liked each other, but I was too shy to ask her address or telephone number. Finally I looked up in the phonebook the addresses of all women named Sabine. It’s costing me a lot of money, and what if her name is not in the phonebook?”