Here’s a kind of public service announcement from The Singing Sewermen of Thames Water, urging us not to pour hot turkey fat down the drain this Christmas “because it cools in the sewers, sets hard and causes horrible blockages.” We can think of a few other things we’ve seen struggle round the U-bend that might fall into that category as well. But we digress.

To hammer home the message, the sewermen (and women) have recorded this, their own version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, but as they’re all from London and they’ve recorded it in a fucking sewer, it’s a bit tough to figure out what they’re barking on about.

We’re pretty sure that we picked up the line “Put your fat in the rubbish in the bin, not in our Lynn,” at about 18 seconds but to be honest, the rest of it could do with a bloody good subtitling. And who is ‘our Lynn?’ Is that a pet name that has been given to the London sewage network? Some kind of secret code? We fear we must be told.

Incidentally, did you know that an estimated 500 tonnes of fat – the equivalent of 1.8 million standard blocks of lard – goes down the Thames Water drains every December alone? If you think really hard about it, it’s exactly the same as driving a giant bus made out of cancer straight through a tiny matchstick village that has been built by starving orphans.

It’s a hell of a lot of gunk for our Lynn to shift too….

You might find THIS in your u-bend.

Where there’s muck there’s brass. Or to be more precise, where there’s sewage there’s gold. That’s the news that’s emanating from International Crazy Central, better known as Japan.

The beautifully-monikered Nagano Prefecture Suwa Construction Office have revealed that approximately 1.9 kilograms (4.2 lbs) of gold can be found in every ton of molten fly ash that is generated when they incinerate sludge at their Suwa-based facility.

What’s more, this is apparently something they’ve known for a while but haven’t bothered to pursue as the effort involved outstripped the potential rewards (we’re not so cool and businesslike here at BW – we’d do the Riverdance in the nip for a speck of real gold, but only if it was in one of those little black velvet pouches.)

But now that the price of gold is rising, it’s suddenly become worth their while and the Nagano Prefecture Suwa Construction Office have got themselves a brand new shit-sifting department as they bid to bring in a few extra zillion yen.

Don’t try it at home kids – get yourselves down into the sewers with a carrier bag, a strong pair of tights and a clothes peg for your nose instead.

[Pink Tentacle]