Blog Archives
Omagh Family Cat Returns Home After Two Months Away, Miaowing In French
Spencer, the 7-year-old cat who disappeared from its home on the Kelvin Road in February, has finally returned home ‘as if it had never been away’ according to his owners.
Remarkably, the Peke-faced Persian now miaows in a French accent, sparking rumours that Spencer may have accidentally boarded a plane at Aldergrove or got the ferry across to France.
Tommy Winters, who bought the cat off a man near Bundoran in 2012 for £300, admitted that, although they were delighted to see Spencer again, he had changed somewhat and now spends his time womanising around the estate.
“Because of his French miaow he seems to think he is someone now. And to be fair, the women cats are loving it. He’s just not the same cat though around the house and almost looks at us with disdain, walking around the house in a cool way like John Travolta.”
Winters revealed that Spencer had now acquired a taste for expensive cheese and steak tartare with onions.
Meanwhile the PSNI in Omagh have appealed again for local men to think twice before taking their tops off during this good spell. Seventeen complaints were made to the police yesterday regarding ‘unsightly standing’ at street corners.
Omagh Man Destroys Danish Pastry Display After Ireland Defeat
An Omagh lawyer has admitted he allowed his passion and temper to get the better of him after obliterating the Danish Pastry display in the Spar in the town this morning at 7am.
Paul McMahon (56), an avid Republic of Ireland supporter, has been charged with the destruction of 56 cinnamon rolls, 30 raisin swirls and 3 small pecan slices. The Fintona Road man revealed:
“I was still sore enough when I woke up over the humiliation by Denmark the night before. The last thing I needed was a Spar woman trying to promote Danish Pastry in my face at seven in the morning. I completely lost it and fly-kicked the tray out of her hand and set about wrecking the whole section. I don’t regret it. Feck them.”
Local shopper Damien Hurson, who happened to be perusing the cabbages at the same time, countered this version of events and went as far as denying it ever happened:
“Yous Tyrone Tribulations ones do this every year when Ireland get bate. Yous made up a story about a man ruining the kiwis in a fruit shop when New Zeland beat them in the rugby and a man wrecking the french bread stall when Henry handled the ball. Get new material, OK?”
Local historians have warned people to refrain from targeting Danish Pastry displays as it was the Austrians who invented them.
Russian Man Stripped Of 1972 Washingbay Sports Wheelbarrow Race Medal

Popov and McCabe coming from behind
A 60-year old Derrylaughan man is said to be livid after his winning performance during the 1972 under-16 wheelbarrow race has been declared null and void due to his lifting partner’s subsequent disqualification.
Dimitri Popov, who was visiting distant cousins in Brocagh that year, sadly passed away in 1999 in a circus accident but his widow has been informed of the decision.
His racing partner, John Boy McCabe, is enraged at the decision which saw him return the ice-cream tokens he won as a result of his victorious participation as a 16-year old:
“It’s scandalous. Dimitri wasn’t on drugs. He was drunk ok but that was because he looked a bit older than what he was at the time and was drinking in Falls’ Bar from midday with everyone else. All this is based on the Olympic doping scandal but you can’t tar them all with the one brush. If anything it was me who did all the work. All he did was houl my legs. I’m gutted.”
The Washingbay Sports Day committee have subsequently awarded the ice cream tokens to the second placed team, Pierre LeGrille and Thierry Jambon from Paris, who were also holidaying in Brocagh at the time. A formal presentation will take place in front of the Eiffel Tower in August.
Portuguese Manager Phoned East Tyrone Club Manager At Half Time Over Moths

A summer’s day in Ardboe
A source from within the European Championship winning Portugal management team has revealed that their manager, Fernando Santos, made a panicked call to an unnamed lough shore manager at half time during their final match against the host nation France.
Santos, who holidayed in Ardboe regularly during the 80s and names eel as his favourite fish, was concerned that the infestation of moths in the Paris stadium was affecting his players and hoped that the experience of dealing with midges on the shores of Lough Neagh could be passed on to his squad.
Our source added:
“He was out of his mind but found a pay phone outside the changing rooms and urgently telephoned an Irish number. He seemed to know him well as he put on an Irish accent and I heard Fernando say at one stage, ‘Ghost-oh Jaysus boys the moths are tarra, Patsy’. His team talk after the call will live in my memory forever”
Santos immediately called the players into a huddle and gave them the most important advice of their young sporting lives:
“It transpired that the advice given by the east Tyrone manager was to ‘ate the bastes’ whilst you’re playing. Ronaldo asked, in Portuguese, what the hell that meant, even though he wasn’t playing at that stage. Santos explained that ‘ate the bastes’ meant to devour the moths as you play as it reduced their numbers as well as providing constant nutritional benefits. He mumbled something about it not doing Brian McGuigan any harm, whoever the hell he is.”
Portugal went on to win 1-0 in extra time, sparking wild celebrations in Porto, Lisbon and Dungannon.
Coalisland Set To Sue Iceland And Possibly France

Iceland tonight
Iceland, who are appearing in their first major soccer championships, have always been happily known as Iceland ever since the ice-age. However, it appears that following a trip from a group of Coalisland GAA players to Reykjavik for a sub-zero training camp to prepare for games in the high altitude of Carrickmore and Strabane, the Icelandic Federation have adopted their pronunciation of Coalisland as their Euro’16 name for the top let hand corner of the TV.
Coalisland stalwart Renoir McSherry added:
“Them boys kept asking us questions about the town and about Landi’s deals on cowboy suppers and stuff. We kept saying it’s hard to bate the ‘island for a good feed. It’s now quite obvious, after watching their 1-1 draw against the Portygal, that they’ve adopted L’islande after hearing it from us. I feel raw and hard done by. We’ll be taking them boys to Omagh court.”
The (CNCG) Coalisland Name Conservation Group’s chairwoman Sheila McAteer has also threatened to sue the French nation for making up a new word based on their own local pronunciation of the town and are calling for both France and Iceland to be thrown out of the competition.
“It’s the only way these people will have manners put on them. And it’ll let them know we haven’t forgotten about the Thierry Henry handball either. “
Meanwhile, the CNCG are looking into renaming Annagher ‘Belgium’ if their case against Iceland is unsuccessful.
Customers Told To ‘Quit Moaning’ After Sandwich Bar Runs Out Of Bread
A Dungannon sandwich bar has threatened to close up and move somewhere else, blaming locals for being ‘deadly whingers’ after they received 413 complaints in a week for not having any bread.
Customers were seen leaving Campbell’s Sandwich Bar shaking their heads and holding their tuna fillings or egg and onion mix in a small clear plastic bag. Campbell’s told customers it would be another week before they’d get the time to buy bread from the shops and that this was the way shops served sandwiches in places like Spain and France anyway.
Local man Kieran Hughes was having none of it:
“I’ve been to Spain loads of times and I know for a fact they have bread in their sandwich. The man is lying. Whoever heard of a breadless sandwich? I order a Club Sandwich and walked out holding chicken, bacon, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise in my hands. It was dripping all over the place and ruined my clothes. I’ll not be back!”
Shop owner James Soupy Campbell reckoned people needed to lighten up a bit and to stop being picky about everything:
“People need to lighten up a bit and stop being picky about everything.”
The news follows reports of a shop near Coalisland called JJ’s Chips which has never served a chip since it opened two months ago. Our reporter ordered a fish supper as part of an undercover operation for Tyrone Tribulations and received a battered fish with one slice of unbuttered white bread and a sachet of salt from KFC.
On further inspection it turned out the fish had no batter on it but had clearly been beaten around the shop with a hammer or something. Our reporter gave it 7/10.
Stephen Nolan has been asked to do a programme on declining food standards in Tyrone.
Riots As Coalisland Silver Band Re-classified As A Brass Band
There have been overnight riots in Coalisland, with three cars burned, two off-licences raided and bricks thrown as far as
the metal bridge, in scenes not witnessed in the town since the height of the troubles even including the year the international music festival turned nasty.
Residents of the town have struck out, with all rational thought dispersing like a plume of smoke, following the reporting on UTV news that Coalisland Silver band, a bedrock of the local community, is no more than a common brass band. Not one of the instruments tested was found to contain silver although almost all members tried to plead the case by sowing off various sizes of miraculous medals.
All band members have been ordered to “hand in their badges and mouthpieces by noon Friday” by the town’s mayor and band’s leader Des Conway, who has marshalled the troupe since 1968. The Tyrone county board are allegedly shocked at the news and have suspended the band from any further performances at St. Enda’s Omagh GAA pitch on match days, despite the fact the band is yet to play at any GAA functions.
Unconfirmed reports suggest the band owes the town’s Credit Union up to £35’000, mostly thought to be on a concept for its new uniform which has remained unchanged since 1968 apart from the time it reverted from black to green for the trip to France in the late 1990s, and back to green again when they got home as the green uniforms had to be sold to pay customs and excise debts for smuggling bangers and flick knives.
The drummer of the band is understood to be housebound, while one young trumpeter has been stuck in his room since the start of the riots, playing the theme tune to The Sunday Game over and over and shaking his head whilst saying “ah naw”.
Local business owner Fabio Landi has shut up shop to band members and told us that there will be no more private late night openings for the band after their trips away to places like Dungannon, Killyman and even Cappagh.
More Power To Your Elbow front man Dixie Wrecker (real name Paddy Quinn) revealed the disgust in the local community following the news and subsequent civil unrest in the area.
“Aye, she’s tara altogether hi. The Antiques Roadshow are for the ‘island next Sunday and the band was due to do the theme tune live for them – you know, that lovely wee E Flat number with the horns. She’s a quare hannalin alright because we’re getting shipped in to give them a dig out, and sure we’re gonna try and ream her aff on the fiddle an the spoons. Its just lethal hi… who wouldha thunk it? I mean there’s all sorts of jokes coming from Clonoe about ‘heavy metal music this’ and ‘there’s more silver in the lough’ that. They’re saying there was probably never even any coal in Coalisland, and they’re calling it “Turf-town” out of pure badness. The towns a tip now with no lampposts still standing and bad words drawn all over the barracks, and not a windee in ‘er.”
With the news reaching towns as far away as Feldkirch in Austria, young women, who at earlier stages of their lives paraded round the town and caused many fights, are now receiving free counselling to cope with the shock. Trocaire and SVDP are also outraged and want to give all the thousands raised for them by the band over the years back to the people who gave them the money in the first place outside the chapel on Sundays for years. They will be handing out fivers after mass this weekend.
The manager of the local old people’s home has also told Tyrone Tribulations ‘they can go an shite’. Coalisland Parochial Centre is holding a sit down protest this Saturday at 3pm. The church has advised that there will be triangle sandwiches, and very strong tasting orange cordial. Patrons are advised to bring their own seats.
‘Milk In First’ Report On Tea-Making Sparks Outrage Across County
Disturbances broke out across parts of Tyrone yesterday after a report produced by the Institute of Studies said that putting milk into the cup before the tea makes it taste better.
The report, authored by Tyrone-born professor of science Wolfgang O’Neill, has stated that putting milk into the cup first, rather than tea followed by the milk, makes it tastier, and, controversially, that those individuals who put it in first are more likely to be much cleverer than those who don’t. The report went on to hypothesise that people who insist on dunking biscuits into their tea are also far more intellectually advanced than their non-dunking counterparts, stating,
‘Dunkers, previously dismissed as a bunch of uncouth, ill-mannered hoors, may actually be high-functioning geniuses with highly advanced mental faculties, with an IQ far higher even than people like Stephen Fry, that boyo who does Mastermind, and Hugo Duncan’.
O’Neill denied that the report was produced on the back of a bunch of unsubstantiated half-truths with virtually no substance.
“Abject nonsense. All my research was done under almost laboratory conditions. I watched people pour their tay in the Millwheel in Dungannon and McGlinchey’s in Coalisland, and then asked them their 7-times table and if they knew what the capital of France was. The dunkers and milk-in-first brigade were miles ahead”.
Residents living in the centre of Dungannon feared for their safety when a contingent of mildly-irritated pensioners took to the streets to protest against the findings in the report, with one shop-owner being threatened with a Blue Riband biscuit. Cyril McGlone from Altmore, determined not to be stereotyped as just another pensioner trotting out the usual generalisations, said,
“This sort of thing would never have happened in my day. It’s political correctness gone mad. Everything in moderation, that’s what I say. Young people of today have no respect. I’m 84 you know”.
O’Neill had also intended to include in his report a potential link between acting the eejit and coffee-drinkers, but struggled to find participants for the study.
“We couldn’t find anyone in the county who drank coffee, not even in Donaghmore. That’s why there’s none of thon fancy Starbucks or Costa Coffee shops anywhere. I even went into the Linen Green in Dungannon to see if they sold it and they said, ‘We don’t do cocktails’. It’s likely we might have to go as far afield as Armagh to find someone who drinks it. However”, said the scientist confidently, “Preliminary reports indicate that coffee drinkers are likely to be sly, distrustful, and have eyes that are too close together. Fact”.
US Government Demand Words ‘Deadly’ and ‘Lethal’ Be Outlawed In Tyrone

En route to Strabane
White House officials have confirmed that they will take direct action on Mid-Ulster residents if they persist on using ‘deadly’ and ‘lethal’ in everyday speak, if local councils don’t enforce the ruling themselves. Obama’s Press Vice-Secretary Jake Power reiterated the need for immediate ruling on this issue in order to prevent international intervention:
“We have liaised with officials in Omagh, Dungannon, Cookstown and Magherafelt for two years now over this issue and it looks like they’ve done nothing about it. We intercept thousands of calls all over Europe and if anyone is on the phone to someone from Tyrone all you hear is ‘deadly’ this and ‘lethal’ that which results in our Secret Service Officers going into overdrive. Last week we were listening to a French politician who was talking to a farmer in Strabane about cattle products. The phrase ‘lethal crack in our barn’ was used and we had six fighter pilots on their way to Central Airforce in the middle of the night. West Tyrone could have been nuked.”
Cookstown Council have responded by confirming they have cracked down on the word ‘deadly’ by using on-foot volunteers on the Main Street telling people they hear using that word to tone it down a bit. Volunteer Pat McGrane from The Rock admits it’s a thankless task:
“I’ve had three slaps already. Just this morning I heard an old lady telling her friend that that her husband was a ‘deadly man’ for the scratching at night. I asked her to perhaps think about using a different word and she gave me a mouthful and a dig across the jaw. It’s not worth it. The Americans need to be more tolerant to our ways.”
In other news the White House have also rejected Donegal’s bid to become a part of America.
Stewartstown Issues Sort-Of Nuclear Threat To World
The sprawling village of Stewartstown, where no one has emigrated from or immigrated to since 1979, has decided to flex its international muscle and issue a sort-of nuclear threat to the rest of the world that they’ll be ‘taking no more shit’ from today onwards. Unfortunately nicknamed ‘tintown’, after it was revealed in 1948 that labourers wrap everything in tinfoil from their lunch to their tools, residents have decided that now was the time to reveal the arsenal of weapons they have been stockpiling since 1969 when they struck up a deal with the Russians.
Lord Mayor Cal Coyle announced during a hastily-arranged press conference outside the Credit Union:
“Yes, that’s right lads and lassies. We’re the bucking big boys now. We have shedfuls of Spanish fireworks, caps for Chinese toy guns, French bangers and Brazilian sparklers. Buckets of the stuff. Underground bunkers, hideouts in rural areas – you name it. Let the message be loud and clear – one more online reference to tintown or any other derogatory reference to Stewartstown and this planet is going to experience the Armageddon. Starting with Portugal or New Zealand maybe. We might give Brackaville a rattle first, like as a test drive.”
Flanked by 7 men and 3 women all wearing welding masks as disguise, Coyle was asked what sparked the declaration of war on the world at this particular time:
“I was reading something on boards.ie yesterday regarding weeding lawns and someone said something about ‘Stewartstown a.k.a. Tintown’. That was the straw that broke the donkey’s back. Then there’s them North Koreans, the Pakistanis, the Yanks, the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranis all boasting away about their nuclear capabilities. Well, try counteracting 5000 loop-the-loop fireworks being dropped on you from about 1200 feet. One of our lads recently got a provisional pilot’s licence and we know we can hire a small 2-seater from Newtownards. Just push our buttons one more time. ONE MORE TIME.”
The UN have confirmed they are taking this threat seriously but will wait to see if it’s just a result of nerves before the Intermediate quarter final against Brackaville that has sparked today’s declaration.
Moy Man Spotted Clapping And Smiling At Armagh Game. Public Punishment Considered.
Photographic and video footage has finally confirmed rumours that a high profile Moy man, locally named as ‘Mac’, was seen openly smiling and even clapping as Armagh struck eight goals past Leitrim last weekend. The man’s best friend has moved quickly to defend the once-popular clubman by explaining to journalists gathered outside Tomney’s that he was only putting it on to impress a woman from Armagh he’d been chasing for a while. Locals, however, are refusing to accept this theory. Tom Donaghy (67) said:
“Listen, if God himself said he was an Armagh man I still wouldn’t be smiling and clapping when they scored. I’d rather be savaged by a pack of ravenous hounds. I’ve had my suspicions about this fellow for years now. He has a history of straddling the Blackwater. This man needs to be tied to a tree in the middle of the village with a sign hanging around his neck saying “Up Armagh”. Unfortunately he might like that though.”
The man’s family are refusing to comment though an unnamed cousin claimed he’s not surprised:
“Ah he’s an old romantic. One time he was going with a French girl and he started wearing stripy jumpers and berets. It didn’t make him any less a Tyrone man. Smiling at an Armagh goal might be hard for some to swallow but there’s worse things out there. However, if he did clap I cannot defend him. I would disown the fella too. A flogging might be justified here. See if he goes to Galway this weekend….”
The Moy GAA committee have called an extraordinary meeting to decide on how they will deal with the whole debacle. Video footage is being closely studied with lip-readers expected to confirm whether he said “deadly stuff” after the 6th goal. ‘Mac’ is expected to claim an unreasonable hatred of Leitrim in his defence.