2020: What a funny old year it was…

The pandemic has not given us much to laugh about this year but yet it still has some weird stories in store

Paris: The coronavirus has not given us much to laugh about in 2020. Yet the year still had its fair share of the weird and the wonderful. Here is our pick of some of its wackiest stories:

An Austrian village is changing it name from Fucking to Fugging on January 1 after years of being ridiculed by tourists taking selfies with — or even stealing — its signs. Villagers, known as Fuckingers, “have had enough of visitors and their bad jokes”, mayor Andrea Holzner said. Nearby Petting, however, is sticking with its name.

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India’s National Cow Commission unveils a new smartphone chip made of cow dung which it claims protects users from radiation. “All this has been approved by science,” the head of the official body set up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party said. Hindus hold the cow sacred with several ruling BJP MPs touting cow dung and urine as cures for the coronavirus.

A mysterious shiny monolith found in the Utah desert that sparked wild rumours of alien visitations disappeared a week later. “All that was left was a message written in the dirt that said ‘Bye bitch’ with a fresh pee stain next to it,” said Riccardo Marino, who trekked to the remote spot to see it.

Days later a spookily similar monolith popped up in the Carpathian mountains in Romania. It too disappeared mysteriously as it had appeared only for other monoliths to appear in Warsaw, the Netherlands and the Isle of Wight in England.

Police were called to a supermarket in Sydney, Australia to separate three women fighting over toilet rolls as the country went into lockdown in March. A knife was pulled over the last maxi-pack in another shop.

A week earlier robbers held up a lorry loaded with toilet paper in Hong Kong and made off with its precious cargo worth $150 (120 euros) in normal times. The lack of something to wipe with was a real emergency for many in the US where Oregon police were forced to post this on Facebook: “Do not call 9-1-1 just because you ran out of toilet paper.” Instead they helpfully suggested alternatives such as “old rope soaked in sea water” or the “Sears Christmas catalogue, which can get a family of three from December through to Saint Patrick’s Day” in March.