Journalists, they don't just make it up do they ?

I only ask because of a radio interview I heard last night - it was on the radio.

A well known journalist with a national newspaper has his own evening show on BBC Radio Leeds and last night he was interviewing a not so well known chicken expert about the impending doom and end of the world scenario that is bird flu.

By the way, I'll not name the well known journalist with the national newspaper because I quite like his radio show, it has the only amusing content broadcast by BBC Radio Leeds at the moment, but his name, for instance, is not Martin Pelner, oh no, its something completely different.

Anyway, this well known journalist with a national newspaper, which may or may not be The Guardian, and who is certainly not called Martin Pelner, was intent on whipping up major panic and hysteria across West Yorkshire by predicting the end of civilisation as we know it when we all catch bird flu in a couple of weeks.

The not so well known chicken expert went to great lengths to advise that only 150 people in the whole world were known to have contracted bird flu, and only half of them had died.

The well known journalist.....oh bollcks, it was Martin Kelner ok ?

Martin Kelner wasn't going to let the chicken expert off the hook so easily, "half of the people died ?" he exclaimed in alarm, "thats potentially millions of people in West Yorkshire who will die when bird flu hits us"

Once again chicken man asserts that its really, really hard to catch bird flu, I mean really, really hard, in fact he went on to explain how you could catch it if you really really wanted to and it basically involves kissing the chicken, hard, lots of times, you need to take a chicken as a lover and really breath in its germs before you'll catch its flu.

None of this impressed Mr Kelner at all, he wanted to stick with his "Half of West Yorkshire wiped out" headline, he'd probably already written the story just in case he was one of the ones to be wiped out.

"Thats all well and good" Mr K continued, "but when someone does take a chicken as a lover and then catches its flu, then, then it will spread like wildfire won't it ?"

"No" said chicken man, "no Martin, like I've already said, you can't catch bird flu from people, you only catch it from birds, so if you took a chicken lover then only you would get the flu, I won't catch it from you"

It went quiet for a while,

"So basically the whole of West Yorkshire has to take a chicken lover in order for half of us to be wiped out then ?", Martin sounded very disappointed.

"Yes Martin"

"Shall we play some music ?"