Office chair set on fire - news that made the world sit up

Along with The Times, I would like to apologise for failing to report an earth-shattering event in Cumbria last month. Some ne’er-do-well set fire to a chair.

I'm really dissapointed to have missed this story.

“An office chair was destroyed after it was set on fire on the grassy area off Maude Street, Kendal, this afternoon. Fire crews from Kendal attended along with police. A spokesman for the fire and rescue service said: ‘A delinquent set fire to an office chair in the middle of a grassy area and it was extinguished using one hose jet’.”



That’s it. Nothing else. No one hurt, no questions asked in Parliament, and no ministers’ heads on the block. George W. didn’t threaten to invade the Lake District. But one of the most insignificant events ever to be reported in the Gazette suddenly took wing.

First came the pity. “This really is scraping the barrel. You’ve got to feel sorry for the journalist who wrote it though. I suppose everybody’s got to start somewhere,” said the first response on the website.

Disdain was rife. “I think it’s high time the Westmorland Gazette had something newsworthy to print: perhaps a drowned shopping trolley, or a discarded mint cake,” wrote another.

After the comments began to mount into the dozens (scroll down the page) and tongues became embedded in cheeks Andrew Daniels, the young reporter who happened upon the drama during the daily newsroom drudgery of calls to the local police, posted his own spirited reply. “It takes years of experience to generate so much interest in what at first seemed an innocuous story.”