DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
Pariah (and war criminal) Ramsay Bolton’s profile from the Australian Red Cross report.
• Game of Thrones‘ characters Ramsay Bolton and Daenerys Targaryen have racked up the highest numbers of violations of the laws of war of any characters in the series, according to research carried out by the Australian Red Cross. The volunteers, who watched all 67 episodes of the violent and sexually explicit series to date, found there had been 103 violations of the laws of war including 17 violations by Ramsay Bolton, 15 by Daenerys Targaryen and eight by Bolton’s father Roose. The evil Night King has so far only committed six violations – an amount equal to those committed by Jon Snow, while the conniving Lannisters come in below that with Tywin and his son Tyrion both committing four while the horrid Joffrey only managed to commit three before his death. The violations include everything from torture to taking hostages, the use of child soldiers, attacks on civilians and sexual violence. The Red Cross add that while there’s no shortage of “gruesome fictional crimes” in the series, the real “laws of war” are “serious business”. “Every day they protect the lives of people who are not, or are no longer, part of a conflict – including civilians, wounded soldiers and prisoners.”
• You may not have even known there were that many types of cheese. Australian chef Johnny di Francesco, of Melbourne’s 400 Gradi, has included 154 varieties of cheese on top of a pizza to snare a new Guinness World Record for the greatest varieties of cheese on a pizza. The new record elipses his own former record of 99 (initially inspired by a comment in the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in which one of the turtles, Donatello, described the 99 cheese pizza as an “impossibility”), which was subsequently topped by another person’s 111. The ‘Cheesy Pizza’ is apparently a hit with almost 800 sold in its first five days. Speaking of records, Easter is almost here and the Brazilian town of Pomerode is determined make this year’s celebrations particularly memorable. The town is now home to a 15 metre tall decorated steel Easter egg which took 48 days to construct.
• Voters on a small Canadian island are faced with an unusual situation come polling day on 23rd April: which Matthew MacKay to vote for. The provincial district election on Prince Edward Island, located to the east of the Canadian mainland, will see the incumbent Mr MacKay, a real estate agent, face off against another Mr Mackay, a semi-retired graphic artist who is using his middle initial – J – to distinguish himself. Matthew J Mackay, also known as “Green Mackay” thanks to his political party and “Old Matthew” thanks to his age relative to his rival, blamed the island’s Scottish settlers for the problem, telling CTV News that the “Scots are very frugal people, we recycle everything – we even recycle names.”
