'Tis the season to be jolly. Apparently. Jollity isn't something that registers too often in my psyche, curmudgeonly git that I am. Still, one must make an effort, write Kilian Doyle.
One fella who certainly made the effort was an Italian policeman. This 23-year-old- who is my Nutter Of The Month - was busted after driving 20 miles the wrong way down a motorway. Oddly enough, he was scuttered as an Irish teenager in an alcopops factory.
After terrorising thousands of motorists using the Autostrada del Sol between Florence and Rome, he was eventually stopped by traffic cops using a sandbag barrier. Our hero, smart fella that he was, told arresting officers he genuinely thought each and every one of the other road users were in the wrong. Simultaneously. Again, oddly enough, the Carabinieri didn't believe him. So they breathalysed him with predictable results. The poor lamb blamed his intoxication on his turbulent love life.
Another loser Lothario - a 58-year-old Canadian ambulance driver - gets my Stupidest Man Of The Month award. This randy Saskatoon paramedic got himself in fierce trouble after police spotted him trying to pick up a prostitute . . . in his ambulance. They assumed he wasn't offering her roadside medical attention. .
Not only was he charged with soliciting, but his vehicle was impounded under local anti-prostitution laws. His employers will now have to pay hefty towing and impound fees to get their brand-new ambulance back. Sorry, that should probably read "former employers".
Prize for Rampage Of The Month By A Blind Dude goes, for the second month in a row, to Alin Prica, a Romanian car thief who appears to be having some difficulties coming to terms with his blindness. This 24-year-old sightless Schumacher was arrested for stealing a car and crashing it into a tree - for the second time in a few weeks.
He and another blind chum stole the car and using a sighted friend to give directions drove it 25 miles before ignominiously plummeting into his herbaceous victim. While this incident is bizarre enough, it pales into sanity compared to his previous escapade. At least he had the sense to bring a guide-eejit with him. Last time, he didn't bother, and made it only half a mile before the crunch of metal on wood halted him.
"I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do anything I wanted despite my handicap," he said. "I only crashed because I was not sure of the way home." Rather than give the brave Alin a medal, Romania's heartless police have locked him up.
Another fine example of driving ability the Romanians have locked up is the law-abiding jewel robber who's getting my Award for Wasted Irony. This morally-confused gent snatched a valuable necklace from a jewellers in the town of Ramnicu Valcea. He high-tailed it down the street only to be chased, caught and wrestled to the ground by the shop-keeper, who found his quarry stopped at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights to change.
"He was just standing there waiting until the lights changed and he could cross the road," a local policeman said. "He didn't want to cross it illegally." I really don't want to imagine the kind of punishments our Balkan cousins must have for jaywalking.
Thoughts of public flaying are interfering greatly with the unnatural state of jollity that I've managed to connive myself into displaying. I have to admit I feel distinctly unusual.
Perhaps the Government could introduce public beheadings for motorists caught using their mobile phones? The schadenfreude would get me back to my normal self pretty sharpish. Which would be nice.