£1m claim puts wind up school

A deputy headteacher is suing Bristol city council for £1m because it refused to replace a chair which emitted a "farting" noise every time she sat down , regularly making her the butt of jokes.

The former art teacher told a tribunal she inherited an old, uncomfortable chair when she started at the school and asked for it to be replaced. But the new chair proved equally unsatisfactory. "It was very embarrassing to sit on," she said. "I asked for a chair that didn't give me a dead leg, or make these very embarrassing farting sounds. It was a regular joke that my chair would make these farting sounds, and I regularly had to apologise that it wasn't me, it was my chair."