What were some of the most unusual stories from the British news this year?
From an "unlikely" treat at KFC to a threatening crocodile in an English canal, this episode celebrates the weird and wonderful news from 2025.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:22] I'm Alastair Budge, and in this episode we are going to be talking about the news.
[00:00:29] But not any news.
[00:00:31] Today, in our last episode of the year, we are going to be looking back at six of the most unusual news stories from the UK in 2025.
[00:00:44] From KFC ice cream to crocodiles to strange objects left on trains, this is going to be a celebration of fun, mostly harmless, and most certainly unusual news from the past 12 months.
[00:01:01] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:06] If you have spent much time following the British news in 2025, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is all doom and gloom.
[00:01:19] Tax rises, protests, political scandal, social division, talk of the country going to the dogs.
[00:01:28] While some of that may be true, it isn’t going to be the subject of today’s episode.
[00:01:36] Today, we are only going to talk about good, or rather, unusual news. The kind of news that doesn’t make the front page, because it isn’t that newsworthy, it’s not that important. But it is unusual, in some cases funny, and a break from the gloom of the front pages.
[00:01:59] So, our first story is about road signs, the signs placed on the side of public roads.
[00:02:07] You know, the kind of signs with information like how many miles it is to various towns, if there is a certain speed limit, all the stuff that a driver might need to be aware of.
[00:02:21] The UK, as you will probably know, is a relatively wet country, wet and muddy in many parts. And these road signs can get quite dirty, with cars splashing through puddles and covering them in muddy water, and so on.
[00:02:39] And with local councils having ever-diminishing budgets, well, many road signs aren’t cleaned as often as they probably should be.
[00:02:51] If you’ve spent much time driving around the UK, well, you probably know what I’m talking about.
[00:02:59] And when confronted with a dirty road sign, most drivers no doubt think, “Well, that’s a bit annoying, you can hardly read what’s written there! They should definitely send someone to clean that”.
[00:03:13] Maybe they mutter about it to a neighbour, or tell the hairdresser about it when they’re getting their hair cut. But nothing more comes of it. The signs remain as muddy and dirty as always.
[00:03:29] This year, however, one man made the news for taking things into his own hands.
[00:03:36] Jake Tredgett, a young man from Norwich, decided that if his local council wasn’t going to clean these road signs, well, he would.
[00:03:49] Earlier this year, he started posting videos of himself washing dirty road signs, and he went viral, racking up millions of views of dirty signs being powerwashed.
[00:04:04] He drives around his local area and apparently stops whenever he sees a dirty sign, grabs his power washer and his phone, and leaves 10 minutes later with the sign looking sparkling new.
[00:04:20] I must confess that I watched a few of these videos, you know, as research for this episode, and I can see why they were popular. They are oddly cathartic, and there is something surprisingly pleasing about seeing a filthy road sign, and then 30 seconds later–with the video sped up, of course–the thing looks brand new again.
[00:04:45] Something else I noticed, however, is that there is another aspect of this story; he isn’t just a random guy with a passion for cleaning. He has a cleaning business, and I’m sure his new-found social media success hasn’t exactly been terrible for new clients, so to say he is doing it completely out of the goodness of his own heart is perhaps a simplification.
[00:05:11] But nevertheless, the signs in the Norwich area are in slightly better condition, thanks to Jake Tredgett, and in my book that is no bad thing.
[00:05:24] Unusual story number two is about KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
[00:05:30] Now, like lots of companies, KFC UK likes to jump on the April Fool’s bandwagon by announcing all sorts of implausible things.
[00:05:43] This year, it announced that it was launching its own brand of “Fried-Chicken Toothpaste”.
[00:05:51] This “press announcement” came out on April 1st, so it was obviously never meant to be taken seriously.
[00:05:59] But just a month later there was an announcement from KFC about a real product, and one that is almost as unbelievable as fried-chicken flavoured toothpaste: gravy gelato.
[00:06:16] Now gravy, in case you don’t know that word, is the sauce you make from the fat and juices released when you cook meat.
[00:06:26] It’s normally a brownish sort of colour, and you pour it over meat to give it some extra flavour and to make it taste less dry.
[00:06:37] And in the UK, gravy is a particularly popular option at KFC; people think it goes very well with the fried chicken.
[00:06:48] So that’s gravy.
[00:06:50] And as for gelato, well you might know this is ice cream. Gelato is the Italian word for ice cream. But there is an additional nuance we need to mention; in the UK, like in many countries, some shops or brands have started to use “gelato” instead of ice cream to make it sound like a different and more premium product.
[00:07:19] “Oh no, this isn’t normal ice cream; this is gelato”, or something like that.
[00:07:25] So, in May of this year, KFC announced that it would be selling a limited edition “gravy gelato”.
[00:07:36] Not gravy “ice cream”, which might be just normal, bog standard low-quality ice cream, but premium gravy “gelato”.
[00:07:47] According to the official release, “With a luxuriously velvety texture that melts in your mouth, this unexpected savoury delight blends KFC’s unmistakable bold taste with traditional Italian gelato craftsmanship.”
[00:08:06] And it continued, “Whether you spoon it straight from the tub, serve it up as a sidekick to chicken and waffles, or bring it out as the main event at your next Sunday roast – this one’s for the gravy lovers, the flavour chasers, and anyone brave enough to blur the line between dinner and dessert.”
[00:08:30] End quote.
[00:08:33] Now, I must confess that I didn’t get the chance to try this, and although I like gravy and ice cream–or “gelato–I think I’m quite happy to keep the lines between dinner and dessert quite clearly defined.
[00:08:49] And judging by the fact that it was a limited release, and then nothing more was heard of it, my suspicion is that it tasted just as disgusting as it sounds.
[00:09:01] So there we go, even with our reputation for not being the world’s greatest food connoisseurs, the prospect of gravy-flavoured ice cream was too much even for the people of Great Britain.
[00:09:16] For story number three we will stay on the topic of food, but we’ll move into the surprisingly cut-throat world of competitive gardening, of people trying to grow the biggest or most beautiful vegetables.
[00:09:33] And if you have ever been to a village fair in the UK, you will know that these can be pretty serious affairs.
[00:09:42] And nowhere is it more serious than the CANNA National Giant Vegetables Championship, which is held every Autumn.
[00:09:51] This is like the Olympics for the professional vegetable growers of Britain, and 2025, it turns out, was a record-breaking year.
[00:10:02] Growers from across the country battled it out, and the event smashed six Guinness World Records for super-sized vegetables.
[00:10:14] One man claimed a record in both the longest aubergine category, with his 49 centimetre monster, and the tallest runner bean, which stretched more than 8 metres into the sky.
[00:10:28] A world-beating radish came in at 7.8 metres, a sweet pepper at 26 centimetres, an 8 kilogramme celeriac, and at 4.39 kilogrammes, the world’s heaviest tomato.
[00:10:44] But the star of the show was a squash, which had to be taken to the fair with a fork-lift truck. It weighed an astonishing 1.3 tonnes, the equivalent of a Volkswagen Golf, a small car.
[00:11:01] It is quite something, and at its peak it required a whopping 473 litres of water per day.
[00:11:13] Now, story number four is just plain weird.
[00:11:17] In October of this year, police in the Midlands city of Derby made an announcement that residents should stay vigilant because a crocodile had been spotted in a canal.
[00:11:32] Now, in case I need to clarify this, crocodiles do not naturally exist in the UK. Yes, you might be able to see one in the London Zoo, but no, you will not accidentally stumble across one when walking through the Scottish highlands, or in a canal in Derbyshire, for that matter.
[00:11:53] This being said, in October this year, the police received a call from several concerned residents saying that they had seen a crocodile in the canal.
[00:12:06] They presumably thought “what a load of rubbish”, and when they went to take a look, unsurprisingly, no crocodile could be found.
[00:12:15] But there were pictures of the croc, and it looked real. The police appealed to the public for information about the crocodile. Did someone dump it there? Was it still alive? Was it about to clamber out of the canal and wreak havoc through the calm streets of Derby?
[00:12:36] And for several days…the lines were silent. Nobody knew anything about it.
[00:12:44] Then, the mystery was solved. Or at least, sort of solved.
[00:12:49] The police announced that a local fisherman was surprised to find he had reeled in none other than the missing crocodile.
[00:12:59] And, surprise surprise, it was not a real crocodile; it was a stuffed model crocodile, filled with hay, but it did look uncannily realistic.
[00:13:11] To this day, however, nobody has owned up to chucking it in there, so the mystery remains unsolved.
[00:13:20] Now, unusual news item number five is really a collection of different unusual items. In January this year, a train operator released a statement with a list of all of the unusual items that had been left by passengers on their trains that year.
[00:13:41] The most common items will probably not surprise you: mobile phones, laptops, and wallets.
[00:13:48] But there were several items that certainly fit in the “unusual” category.
[00:13:55] Someone left behind 10 kilograms of raw chicken, which I should underline is not suspected of being connected to the invention of the KFC “gravy gelato”, but as to what someone was doing with 10 kilograms of raw chicken on a train, well, that is anyone’s guess.
[00:14:16] Someone also left behind a live hamster, another person left a prosthetic leg, while someone else left their wig.
[00:14:25] So, it just goes to show that those constant messages over the tannoy reminding passengers to “remember to take all of your belongings before you get off the train”, and “unattended belongings may be removed and destroyed”, well, they do serve a purpose.
[00:14:44] And if you are wondering whether the hamster was joyfully reunited with its owner, or it was, to use the official term used in those threatening messages, “destroyed”, unfortunately the press announcement did not say. Let’s assume it was a joyful reunion.
[00:15:03] And now, moving onto our final story of the day, this is actually one for the most dedicated of listeners, as you may remember that in a version of this “unusual British news” from a couple of years ago, in 2023, there was the story of a solid gold toilet being stolen from Blenheim Palace.
[00:15:26] This was a work by an Italian artist who had created a functioning toilet made out of solid gold. The gold alone was worth a reported $4 million.
[00:15:41] Although the museum manager had boasted that there was no need to guard it, because it was an actual toilet and therefore nobody would want to steal it, they proved to be mistaken, as the entire thing was ripped out of its plumbing.
[00:15:59] For several years, the thieves remained at large, but in 2023 two men were arrested and taken into custody.
[00:16:11] And this year they were finally sentenced.
[00:16:15] One, James Sheen, was a career criminal, but he fell into the trap many criminals seem to fall into, of sending pictures of large wads of cash and boasting about the theft to his friends.
[00:16:32] He was caught by the police, and this year he was sentenced to four years in prison, while another man was sentenced to two years.
[00:16:42] And as for the toilet, well, police believe it was melted down almost immediately, and the gold sold off to dealers up and down the country.
[00:16:54] During the trial, Sheen told the court that he had first visited the toilet as a paying customer, to inspect it.
[00:17:04] He also admitted that during the visit he had actually used the toilet for its intended purpose, and lightheartedly described the experience as "splendid".
[00:17:17] No doubt the facilities he will have to get used to in prison might be somewhat less shiny.
[00:17:24] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the unusual British news of 2025.
[00:17:31] Lighthearted, goodnatured, and well and truly weird.
[00:17:35] And on that note, this is our last episode of 2025, so let me take this opportunity to thank you for your time, thank you for listening and being part of this weird and wonderful world, and you will hear from me next year.
[00:17:52] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:17:57] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:22] I'm Alastair Budge, and in this episode we are going to be talking about the news.
[00:00:29] But not any news.
[00:00:31] Today, in our last episode of the year, we are going to be looking back at six of the most unusual news stories from the UK in 2025.
[00:00:44] From KFC ice cream to crocodiles to strange objects left on trains, this is going to be a celebration of fun, mostly harmless, and most certainly unusual news from the past 12 months.
[00:01:01] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:06] If you have spent much time following the British news in 2025, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is all doom and gloom.
[00:01:19] Tax rises, protests, political scandal, social division, talk of the country going to the dogs.
[00:01:28] While some of that may be true, it isn’t going to be the subject of today’s episode.
[00:01:36] Today, we are only going to talk about good, or rather, unusual news. The kind of news that doesn’t make the front page, because it isn’t that newsworthy, it’s not that important. But it is unusual, in some cases funny, and a break from the gloom of the front pages.
[00:01:59] So, our first story is about road signs, the signs placed on the side of public roads.
[00:02:07] You know, the kind of signs with information like how many miles it is to various towns, if there is a certain speed limit, all the stuff that a driver might need to be aware of.
[00:02:21] The UK, as you will probably know, is a relatively wet country, wet and muddy in many parts. And these road signs can get quite dirty, with cars splashing through puddles and covering them in muddy water, and so on.
[00:02:39] And with local councils having ever-diminishing budgets, well, many road signs aren’t cleaned as often as they probably should be.
[00:02:51] If you’ve spent much time driving around the UK, well, you probably know what I’m talking about.
[00:02:59] And when confronted with a dirty road sign, most drivers no doubt think, “Well, that’s a bit annoying, you can hardly read what’s written there! They should definitely send someone to clean that”.
[00:03:13] Maybe they mutter about it to a neighbour, or tell the hairdresser about it when they’re getting their hair cut. But nothing more comes of it. The signs remain as muddy and dirty as always.
[00:03:29] This year, however, one man made the news for taking things into his own hands.
[00:03:36] Jake Tredgett, a young man from Norwich, decided that if his local council wasn’t going to clean these road signs, well, he would.
[00:03:49] Earlier this year, he started posting videos of himself washing dirty road signs, and he went viral, racking up millions of views of dirty signs being powerwashed.
[00:04:04] He drives around his local area and apparently stops whenever he sees a dirty sign, grabs his power washer and his phone, and leaves 10 minutes later with the sign looking sparkling new.
[00:04:20] I must confess that I watched a few of these videos, you know, as research for this episode, and I can see why they were popular. They are oddly cathartic, and there is something surprisingly pleasing about seeing a filthy road sign, and then 30 seconds later–with the video sped up, of course–the thing looks brand new again.
[00:04:45] Something else I noticed, however, is that there is another aspect of this story; he isn’t just a random guy with a passion for cleaning. He has a cleaning business, and I’m sure his new-found social media success hasn’t exactly been terrible for new clients, so to say he is doing it completely out of the goodness of his own heart is perhaps a simplification.
[00:05:11] But nevertheless, the signs in the Norwich area are in slightly better condition, thanks to Jake Tredgett, and in my book that is no bad thing.
[00:05:24] Unusual story number two is about KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
[00:05:30] Now, like lots of companies, KFC UK likes to jump on the April Fool’s bandwagon by announcing all sorts of implausible things.
[00:05:43] This year, it announced that it was launching its own brand of “Fried-Chicken Toothpaste”.
[00:05:51] This “press announcement” came out on April 1st, so it was obviously never meant to be taken seriously.
[00:05:59] But just a month later there was an announcement from KFC about a real product, and one that is almost as unbelievable as fried-chicken flavoured toothpaste: gravy gelato.
[00:06:16] Now gravy, in case you don’t know that word, is the sauce you make from the fat and juices released when you cook meat.
[00:06:26] It’s normally a brownish sort of colour, and you pour it over meat to give it some extra flavour and to make it taste less dry.
[00:06:37] And in the UK, gravy is a particularly popular option at KFC; people think it goes very well with the fried chicken.
[00:06:48] So that’s gravy.
[00:06:50] And as for gelato, well you might know this is ice cream. Gelato is the Italian word for ice cream. But there is an additional nuance we need to mention; in the UK, like in many countries, some shops or brands have started to use “gelato” instead of ice cream to make it sound like a different and more premium product.
[00:07:19] “Oh no, this isn’t normal ice cream; this is gelato”, or something like that.
[00:07:25] So, in May of this year, KFC announced that it would be selling a limited edition “gravy gelato”.
[00:07:36] Not gravy “ice cream”, which might be just normal, bog standard low-quality ice cream, but premium gravy “gelato”.
[00:07:47] According to the official release, “With a luxuriously velvety texture that melts in your mouth, this unexpected savoury delight blends KFC’s unmistakable bold taste with traditional Italian gelato craftsmanship.”
[00:08:06] And it continued, “Whether you spoon it straight from the tub, serve it up as a sidekick to chicken and waffles, or bring it out as the main event at your next Sunday roast – this one’s for the gravy lovers, the flavour chasers, and anyone brave enough to blur the line between dinner and dessert.”
[00:08:30] End quote.
[00:08:33] Now, I must confess that I didn’t get the chance to try this, and although I like gravy and ice cream–or “gelato–I think I’m quite happy to keep the lines between dinner and dessert quite clearly defined.
[00:08:49] And judging by the fact that it was a limited release, and then nothing more was heard of it, my suspicion is that it tasted just as disgusting as it sounds.
[00:09:01] So there we go, even with our reputation for not being the world’s greatest food connoisseurs, the prospect of gravy-flavoured ice cream was too much even for the people of Great Britain.
[00:09:16] For story number three we will stay on the topic of food, but we’ll move into the surprisingly cut-throat world of competitive gardening, of people trying to grow the biggest or most beautiful vegetables.
[00:09:33] And if you have ever been to a village fair in the UK, you will know that these can be pretty serious affairs.
[00:09:42] And nowhere is it more serious than the CANNA National Giant Vegetables Championship, which is held every Autumn.
[00:09:51] This is like the Olympics for the professional vegetable growers of Britain, and 2025, it turns out, was a record-breaking year.
[00:10:02] Growers from across the country battled it out, and the event smashed six Guinness World Records for super-sized vegetables.
[00:10:14] One man claimed a record in both the longest aubergine category, with his 49 centimetre monster, and the tallest runner bean, which stretched more than 8 metres into the sky.
[00:10:28] A world-beating radish came in at 7.8 metres, a sweet pepper at 26 centimetres, an 8 kilogramme celeriac, and at 4.39 kilogrammes, the world’s heaviest tomato.
[00:10:44] But the star of the show was a squash, which had to be taken to the fair with a fork-lift truck. It weighed an astonishing 1.3 tonnes, the equivalent of a Volkswagen Golf, a small car.
[00:11:01] It is quite something, and at its peak it required a whopping 473 litres of water per day.
[00:11:13] Now, story number four is just plain weird.
[00:11:17] In October of this year, police in the Midlands city of Derby made an announcement that residents should stay vigilant because a crocodile had been spotted in a canal.
[00:11:32] Now, in case I need to clarify this, crocodiles do not naturally exist in the UK. Yes, you might be able to see one in the London Zoo, but no, you will not accidentally stumble across one when walking through the Scottish highlands, or in a canal in Derbyshire, for that matter.
[00:11:53] This being said, in October this year, the police received a call from several concerned residents saying that they had seen a crocodile in the canal.
[00:12:06] They presumably thought “what a load of rubbish”, and when they went to take a look, unsurprisingly, no crocodile could be found.
[00:12:15] But there were pictures of the croc, and it looked real. The police appealed to the public for information about the crocodile. Did someone dump it there? Was it still alive? Was it about to clamber out of the canal and wreak havoc through the calm streets of Derby?
[00:12:36] And for several days…the lines were silent. Nobody knew anything about it.
[00:12:44] Then, the mystery was solved. Or at least, sort of solved.
[00:12:49] The police announced that a local fisherman was surprised to find he had reeled in none other than the missing crocodile.
[00:12:59] And, surprise surprise, it was not a real crocodile; it was a stuffed model crocodile, filled with hay, but it did look uncannily realistic.
[00:13:11] To this day, however, nobody has owned up to chucking it in there, so the mystery remains unsolved.
[00:13:20] Now, unusual news item number five is really a collection of different unusual items. In January this year, a train operator released a statement with a list of all of the unusual items that had been left by passengers on their trains that year.
[00:13:41] The most common items will probably not surprise you: mobile phones, laptops, and wallets.
[00:13:48] But there were several items that certainly fit in the “unusual” category.
[00:13:55] Someone left behind 10 kilograms of raw chicken, which I should underline is not suspected of being connected to the invention of the KFC “gravy gelato”, but as to what someone was doing with 10 kilograms of raw chicken on a train, well, that is anyone’s guess.
[00:14:16] Someone also left behind a live hamster, another person left a prosthetic leg, while someone else left their wig.
[00:14:25] So, it just goes to show that those constant messages over the tannoy reminding passengers to “remember to take all of your belongings before you get off the train”, and “unattended belongings may be removed and destroyed”, well, they do serve a purpose.
[00:14:44] And if you are wondering whether the hamster was joyfully reunited with its owner, or it was, to use the official term used in those threatening messages, “destroyed”, unfortunately the press announcement did not say. Let’s assume it was a joyful reunion.
[00:15:03] And now, moving onto our final story of the day, this is actually one for the most dedicated of listeners, as you may remember that in a version of this “unusual British news” from a couple of years ago, in 2023, there was the story of a solid gold toilet being stolen from Blenheim Palace.
[00:15:26] This was a work by an Italian artist who had created a functioning toilet made out of solid gold. The gold alone was worth a reported $4 million.
[00:15:41] Although the museum manager had boasted that there was no need to guard it, because it was an actual toilet and therefore nobody would want to steal it, they proved to be mistaken, as the entire thing was ripped out of its plumbing.
[00:15:59] For several years, the thieves remained at large, but in 2023 two men were arrested and taken into custody.
[00:16:11] And this year they were finally sentenced.
[00:16:15] One, James Sheen, was a career criminal, but he fell into the trap many criminals seem to fall into, of sending pictures of large wads of cash and boasting about the theft to his friends.
[00:16:32] He was caught by the police, and this year he was sentenced to four years in prison, while another man was sentenced to two years.
[00:16:42] And as for the toilet, well, police believe it was melted down almost immediately, and the gold sold off to dealers up and down the country.
[00:16:54] During the trial, Sheen told the court that he had first visited the toilet as a paying customer, to inspect it.
[00:17:04] He also admitted that during the visit he had actually used the toilet for its intended purpose, and lightheartedly described the experience as "splendid".
[00:17:17] No doubt the facilities he will have to get used to in prison might be somewhat less shiny.
[00:17:24] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the unusual British news of 2025.
[00:17:31] Lighthearted, goodnatured, and well and truly weird.
[00:17:35] And on that note, this is our last episode of 2025, so let me take this opportunity to thank you for your time, thank you for listening and being part of this weird and wonderful world, and you will hear from me next year.
[00:17:52] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:17:57] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:22] I'm Alastair Budge, and in this episode we are going to be talking about the news.
[00:00:29] But not any news.
[00:00:31] Today, in our last episode of the year, we are going to be looking back at six of the most unusual news stories from the UK in 2025.
[00:00:44] From KFC ice cream to crocodiles to strange objects left on trains, this is going to be a celebration of fun, mostly harmless, and most certainly unusual news from the past 12 months.
[00:01:01] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:06] If you have spent much time following the British news in 2025, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is all doom and gloom.
[00:01:19] Tax rises, protests, political scandal, social division, talk of the country going to the dogs.
[00:01:28] While some of that may be true, it isn’t going to be the subject of today’s episode.
[00:01:36] Today, we are only going to talk about good, or rather, unusual news. The kind of news that doesn’t make the front page, because it isn’t that newsworthy, it’s not that important. But it is unusual, in some cases funny, and a break from the gloom of the front pages.
[00:01:59] So, our first story is about road signs, the signs placed on the side of public roads.
[00:02:07] You know, the kind of signs with information like how many miles it is to various towns, if there is a certain speed limit, all the stuff that a driver might need to be aware of.
[00:02:21] The UK, as you will probably know, is a relatively wet country, wet and muddy in many parts. And these road signs can get quite dirty, with cars splashing through puddles and covering them in muddy water, and so on.
[00:02:39] And with local councils having ever-diminishing budgets, well, many road signs aren’t cleaned as often as they probably should be.
[00:02:51] If you’ve spent much time driving around the UK, well, you probably know what I’m talking about.
[00:02:59] And when confronted with a dirty road sign, most drivers no doubt think, “Well, that’s a bit annoying, you can hardly read what’s written there! They should definitely send someone to clean that”.
[00:03:13] Maybe they mutter about it to a neighbour, or tell the hairdresser about it when they’re getting their hair cut. But nothing more comes of it. The signs remain as muddy and dirty as always.
[00:03:29] This year, however, one man made the news for taking things into his own hands.
[00:03:36] Jake Tredgett, a young man from Norwich, decided that if his local council wasn’t going to clean these road signs, well, he would.
[00:03:49] Earlier this year, he started posting videos of himself washing dirty road signs, and he went viral, racking up millions of views of dirty signs being powerwashed.
[00:04:04] He drives around his local area and apparently stops whenever he sees a dirty sign, grabs his power washer and his phone, and leaves 10 minutes later with the sign looking sparkling new.
[00:04:20] I must confess that I watched a few of these videos, you know, as research for this episode, and I can see why they were popular. They are oddly cathartic, and there is something surprisingly pleasing about seeing a filthy road sign, and then 30 seconds later–with the video sped up, of course–the thing looks brand new again.
[00:04:45] Something else I noticed, however, is that there is another aspect of this story; he isn’t just a random guy with a passion for cleaning. He has a cleaning business, and I’m sure his new-found social media success hasn’t exactly been terrible for new clients, so to say he is doing it completely out of the goodness of his own heart is perhaps a simplification.
[00:05:11] But nevertheless, the signs in the Norwich area are in slightly better condition, thanks to Jake Tredgett, and in my book that is no bad thing.
[00:05:24] Unusual story number two is about KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
[00:05:30] Now, like lots of companies, KFC UK likes to jump on the April Fool’s bandwagon by announcing all sorts of implausible things.
[00:05:43] This year, it announced that it was launching its own brand of “Fried-Chicken Toothpaste”.
[00:05:51] This “press announcement” came out on April 1st, so it was obviously never meant to be taken seriously.
[00:05:59] But just a month later there was an announcement from KFC about a real product, and one that is almost as unbelievable as fried-chicken flavoured toothpaste: gravy gelato.
[00:06:16] Now gravy, in case you don’t know that word, is the sauce you make from the fat and juices released when you cook meat.
[00:06:26] It’s normally a brownish sort of colour, and you pour it over meat to give it some extra flavour and to make it taste less dry.
[00:06:37] And in the UK, gravy is a particularly popular option at KFC; people think it goes very well with the fried chicken.
[00:06:48] So that’s gravy.
[00:06:50] And as for gelato, well you might know this is ice cream. Gelato is the Italian word for ice cream. But there is an additional nuance we need to mention; in the UK, like in many countries, some shops or brands have started to use “gelato” instead of ice cream to make it sound like a different and more premium product.
[00:07:19] “Oh no, this isn’t normal ice cream; this is gelato”, or something like that.
[00:07:25] So, in May of this year, KFC announced that it would be selling a limited edition “gravy gelato”.
[00:07:36] Not gravy “ice cream”, which might be just normal, bog standard low-quality ice cream, but premium gravy “gelato”.
[00:07:47] According to the official release, “With a luxuriously velvety texture that melts in your mouth, this unexpected savoury delight blends KFC’s unmistakable bold taste with traditional Italian gelato craftsmanship.”
[00:08:06] And it continued, “Whether you spoon it straight from the tub, serve it up as a sidekick to chicken and waffles, or bring it out as the main event at your next Sunday roast – this one’s for the gravy lovers, the flavour chasers, and anyone brave enough to blur the line between dinner and dessert.”
[00:08:30] End quote.
[00:08:33] Now, I must confess that I didn’t get the chance to try this, and although I like gravy and ice cream–or “gelato–I think I’m quite happy to keep the lines between dinner and dessert quite clearly defined.
[00:08:49] And judging by the fact that it was a limited release, and then nothing more was heard of it, my suspicion is that it tasted just as disgusting as it sounds.
[00:09:01] So there we go, even with our reputation for not being the world’s greatest food connoisseurs, the prospect of gravy-flavoured ice cream was too much even for the people of Great Britain.
[00:09:16] For story number three we will stay on the topic of food, but we’ll move into the surprisingly cut-throat world of competitive gardening, of people trying to grow the biggest or most beautiful vegetables.
[00:09:33] And if you have ever been to a village fair in the UK, you will know that these can be pretty serious affairs.
[00:09:42] And nowhere is it more serious than the CANNA National Giant Vegetables Championship, which is held every Autumn.
[00:09:51] This is like the Olympics for the professional vegetable growers of Britain, and 2025, it turns out, was a record-breaking year.
[00:10:02] Growers from across the country battled it out, and the event smashed six Guinness World Records for super-sized vegetables.
[00:10:14] One man claimed a record in both the longest aubergine category, with his 49 centimetre monster, and the tallest runner bean, which stretched more than 8 metres into the sky.
[00:10:28] A world-beating radish came in at 7.8 metres, a sweet pepper at 26 centimetres, an 8 kilogramme celeriac, and at 4.39 kilogrammes, the world’s heaviest tomato.
[00:10:44] But the star of the show was a squash, which had to be taken to the fair with a fork-lift truck. It weighed an astonishing 1.3 tonnes, the equivalent of a Volkswagen Golf, a small car.
[00:11:01] It is quite something, and at its peak it required a whopping 473 litres of water per day.
[00:11:13] Now, story number four is just plain weird.
[00:11:17] In October of this year, police in the Midlands city of Derby made an announcement that residents should stay vigilant because a crocodile had been spotted in a canal.
[00:11:32] Now, in case I need to clarify this, crocodiles do not naturally exist in the UK. Yes, you might be able to see one in the London Zoo, but no, you will not accidentally stumble across one when walking through the Scottish highlands, or in a canal in Derbyshire, for that matter.
[00:11:53] This being said, in October this year, the police received a call from several concerned residents saying that they had seen a crocodile in the canal.
[00:12:06] They presumably thought “what a load of rubbish”, and when they went to take a look, unsurprisingly, no crocodile could be found.
[00:12:15] But there were pictures of the croc, and it looked real. The police appealed to the public for information about the crocodile. Did someone dump it there? Was it still alive? Was it about to clamber out of the canal and wreak havoc through the calm streets of Derby?
[00:12:36] And for several days…the lines were silent. Nobody knew anything about it.
[00:12:44] Then, the mystery was solved. Or at least, sort of solved.
[00:12:49] The police announced that a local fisherman was surprised to find he had reeled in none other than the missing crocodile.
[00:12:59] And, surprise surprise, it was not a real crocodile; it was a stuffed model crocodile, filled with hay, but it did look uncannily realistic.
[00:13:11] To this day, however, nobody has owned up to chucking it in there, so the mystery remains unsolved.
[00:13:20] Now, unusual news item number five is really a collection of different unusual items. In January this year, a train operator released a statement with a list of all of the unusual items that had been left by passengers on their trains that year.
[00:13:41] The most common items will probably not surprise you: mobile phones, laptops, and wallets.
[00:13:48] But there were several items that certainly fit in the “unusual” category.
[00:13:55] Someone left behind 10 kilograms of raw chicken, which I should underline is not suspected of being connected to the invention of the KFC “gravy gelato”, but as to what someone was doing with 10 kilograms of raw chicken on a train, well, that is anyone’s guess.
[00:14:16] Someone also left behind a live hamster, another person left a prosthetic leg, while someone else left their wig.
[00:14:25] So, it just goes to show that those constant messages over the tannoy reminding passengers to “remember to take all of your belongings before you get off the train”, and “unattended belongings may be removed and destroyed”, well, they do serve a purpose.
[00:14:44] And if you are wondering whether the hamster was joyfully reunited with its owner, or it was, to use the official term used in those threatening messages, “destroyed”, unfortunately the press announcement did not say. Let’s assume it was a joyful reunion.
[00:15:03] And now, moving onto our final story of the day, this is actually one for the most dedicated of listeners, as you may remember that in a version of this “unusual British news” from a couple of years ago, in 2023, there was the story of a solid gold toilet being stolen from Blenheim Palace.
[00:15:26] This was a work by an Italian artist who had created a functioning toilet made out of solid gold. The gold alone was worth a reported $4 million.
[00:15:41] Although the museum manager had boasted that there was no need to guard it, because it was an actual toilet and therefore nobody would want to steal it, they proved to be mistaken, as the entire thing was ripped out of its plumbing.
[00:15:59] For several years, the thieves remained at large, but in 2023 two men were arrested and taken into custody.
[00:16:11] And this year they were finally sentenced.
[00:16:15] One, James Sheen, was a career criminal, but he fell into the trap many criminals seem to fall into, of sending pictures of large wads of cash and boasting about the theft to his friends.
[00:16:32] He was caught by the police, and this year he was sentenced to four years in prison, while another man was sentenced to two years.
[00:16:42] And as for the toilet, well, police believe it was melted down almost immediately, and the gold sold off to dealers up and down the country.
[00:16:54] During the trial, Sheen told the court that he had first visited the toilet as a paying customer, to inspect it.
[00:17:04] He also admitted that during the visit he had actually used the toilet for its intended purpose, and lightheartedly described the experience as "splendid".
[00:17:17] No doubt the facilities he will have to get used to in prison might be somewhat less shiny.
[00:17:24] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the unusual British news of 2025.
[00:17:31] Lighthearted, goodnatured, and well and truly weird.
[00:17:35] And on that note, this is our last episode of 2025, so let me take this opportunity to thank you for your time, thank you for listening and being part of this weird and wonderful world, and you will hear from me next year.
[00:17:52] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:17:57] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
