Loo with a view: The world's toilets with the best vistas

We may not really care what our view is when we use the loo.

But maybe we should - for according to the World Toilet Organisation we spend three years of our lives on the throne.

And that fact was enough to set author Luke Barclay off on a mission to flush out the planet's best loos with a view.




Among them are remote wilderness loos, such as the ones at Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia and the Boulder Pass Campsite in Montana, which overlooks the spectacular Agassiz Glacier.

Many are on sacred sites - including those in the Valley of Longevity in Ecuador, where locals are said to live to 135, and on Mount Sinai in Egypt, where God is said to have handed the Ten Commandments to Moses.





The loos on the lookout tower at Alcatraz clearly worked, as no escape attempts were successful in the prison's 29-year history.

But women using the aquarium toilet at Mumin Papa Cafe in Akashi, Japan, have complained of being watched by a male sea turtle.

However, the future for interesting toilets is bright, as the new men's loo in Terminal 3 of Singapore's Changi Airport proves.






Loo With A View, by Luke Barclay, is published by Virgin Books at £7.99. To order your copy with free p&p, call The Review Bookstore on 0845 155 0713.

Bid to create world's largest sandwich in Iran fails after crowd eats it before it can be measured

The meat had been cooked, the sandwich almost assembled and assorted Guinness Book of Records dignitaries were patiently waiting by to give it their official stamp of approval.

But cooks in Iran were left in despair after their bid to create the world's longest sandwich failed when the crowd started eating it before it could be measured.

Event organisers had planned to stuff the 1,500-metre-long sandwich with 700 kg of ostrich meat and 700 kg of chicken, and display it in a park in the capital Tehran.

But as the sandwich was being measured, chaos ensued.

The giant snack was gone in minutes, leaving the three Guinness representatives with a problem.

One of the event’s organisers said video footage of the sandwich would be sent to Guinness officials.

"We still think the sandwich will be recorded in the Guinness book because of all the evidence and footage that we will send them," claimed Parvin Shariati.

The stunt had been organised to encourage Iranians to eat a healthier diet.

Ostrich meat is far leaner than much of the Iranian diet with as half as much fat as chicken, lots of iron, and very little cholesterol - as well as being extremely tasty.

Pictured: Fat Boy, the pony who got drunk on fermented apples and fell into a swimming pool

This is the moment a 'drunken' pony fell into a swimming pool after gorging himself on fermented windfall apples.

The pony - nicknamed 'Fat Boy' - escaped from his stable and broke into a back garden with another pony where they began munching on hundreds of fallen apples.

Because the fruit had started to rot and ferment, the greedy horses soon began to show the effects.

Tipsy Fat Boy stumbled across the garden, lost his footing and fell head first into an outdoor swimming pool.

Homeowner Sarah Penhaligon, 28, woke up after hearing a 'huge' splash and found the moorland pony in the shallow end.

But Sarah, of Newquay, Cornwall, was unaware the horse was inebriated and fed it MORE apples to keep it calm while fire crews were called.

She said: 'When I looked outside I saw this massive animal in the dark and I thought the Beast of Bodmin was in the pool.

'I was terrified, but when I took a closer look I realised it was a horse.

'I didn't have a clue what to do next - who do you call when there's a horse stuck in your swimming pool?

'I dialled 999 and they asked which service I wanted and I said I didn't know - I just had a horse in my pool and needed help.'

Police and fire crews raced to the scene at 3am on Tuesday and spent two hours building a set of hay steps in the pool to rescue Fat Boy.

They finally hoisted Fat Boy out of the water at 5am with the help of several harnesses.

Sarah said: 'He looked a bit panicked. He was trying to get out of the pool but couldn't manage it and was getting very tired.

'I decided to sit down next to him and calm him down, so I fed him some apples to keep him occupied.

'The other horse just kept munching away from the tree and didn't seem to care about what was going on at all.'

Fat Boy had escaped from the nearby Trenance Riding Stables.

A spokesperson said that Fat Boy, who is 11-hands, must have smelt the apples.

She added horses are known to get 'punch drunk' from eating too many apples which caused Fat Boy to become unsteady on his legs.

Stable staff only discovered that he had broken-out of his field when they were called by police. A spokesman said it was his 'portly figure' that kept him warm.

'It looks like he was scrounging for apples in the garden and fell in when he trod on the tarpaulin over the pool," he said.

'It's a good job he's got a lot of bulk, as it kept him warm while he was stuck in the water.

'After he got out he was taken back and checked over by a vet, but luckily he's fine.'

It ain't half snuggly, Mum! The ground-breaking pictures of animals capturing life in the womb

As this little fellow's countryman Rolf Harris might say, 'Can you see what it is yet?'
No? Well, that's not surprising. How many times have you seen a baby kangaroo (joey) photographed this early in his mother's pouch? He's still at the embryonic stage, and about the size of a jellybean, but has been captured on camera for a remarkable documentary called Extraordinary Animals In The Womb.
But the cameras for this joint National Geographic Channel and Channel 4 series - from the same people who brought us last year's unforgettable images of baby elephants seemingly dancing in the womb - have traced his incredible journey, from conception to birth, using revolutionary film-making processes.

Ground-breaking photographic techniques, plus state-of-the-art graphics, 4-D scanning techniques and the most sophisticated natural history models ever, have all been used to provide an unparalleled glimpse into a world that few of us would ever expect to see.

For the first time ever, we can follow the embryonic journey of four different animals: our kangaroo, the lemon shark, the Emperor penguin, and the parasitic wasp. And one of the most jaw-dropping sequences is a glimpse of the joey just before he is born - a mass of kicking legs and punching arms, raring to go.
It is a staggeringly ambitious project, and one that has taken several years to make. As Jeremy Dear, head of development at Pioneer Productions, puts it, 'Illustrating what goes on inside a living creature involves the very latest digital technology and innovative filming, combined with anatomically accurate models, to create the impression of really being in the womb.'

It's fair to say that, apart from little joey, the series is a much less cuddly piece of TV than its predecessor, but, if anything, it's more gripping. And it's not one for the faint-hearted either, as it turns on its head whatever assumptions you might have about life in utero being akin to a nice calming waft around a flotation tank.

'One of the most exciting journeys in the series that we look at is that of the lemon shark,' explains the show's producer Peter Chinn. 'We see that this animal's embryos are cannibalistic - they eat their own siblings in order to survive. What goes on inside that particular womb is astonishingly brutal.' With a mixture of high definition (HD) scanning and intricate modelmaking, the fight is recreated for the cameras.

'We've kept it as accurate as possible, and it is really gruesome in places. It happens just as their teeth have begun to form. The embryo is blind, but can sense that it has rivals in the womb, so starts eating its brothers and sisters.' So not one for teatime viewing then.

Fledgling life isn't a barrel of laughs for the cute penguin chicks either. They must battle the coldest weather on the planet, where it really is a case of only the strongest surviving. And as for the parasitic wasp, Peter explains that its larvae must first hijack and exploit the body of another creature, such as a caterpillar. 'By using incredibly detailed scans, we were able to see what was actually going on, and the torment this caterpillar was subjected to. It gives some sense of what remarkable fights for life go on.'
Peter and his team travelled across three continents to obtain the footage involved, and were lucky enough to witness the birth - within a one-hour time frame - of an incredible 14 shark pups. 'It's hard enough to film sharks, never mind trying to capture them mating or giving birth, but we spent five days in a boat in the Bahamas, hoping to find pregnant sharks.'

So how does one spot a pregnant shark? 'There is a specific time of year that pregnant sharks gather, and the local experts we working with knew roughly where to find them,' says Peter. 'But, as is so often the case, it is largely down to patience - and luck.'

Once they had identified their mummy-to-be, the divers were dispatched with special HD cameras, the size of a hand. 'Shark births had been filmed before, but not with the quality of these images. That's the remarkable thing about working in this field - the technology is improving all the time, so the boundaries are always being pushed back.'

In terms of scanning the pregnant animals, medical advances have now made this much more straightforward. 'There was a lot of collaboration with the medical world.

We used a special medical endoscope with an integrated camera. This gave us much better access, so that we could film inside such places as a kangaroo pouch.' But there is only so far that cameras can go. 'You can't just stick a camera into an animal's womb because you'd end up killing the embryo,' says Peter.

Where the photographic and scanning efforts ended, computer imagery took over. A team of model-makers was enlisted to recreate the embryos at various stages. 'These guys had an incredibly difficult job to do,' says Peter. 'Their background is in creating gremlins and the like for movies, but for us they had to produce incredibly accurate representations of embryonic animals.

'Every tiny detail had to be perfect, and everything was checked and double-checked with a team of experts and against scan images. With the shark, for instance, every gill had to be in exactly the right position. It was quite a tortuous procedure.'

Not least when it came to the Emperor penguin. It is virtually impossible to examine the eggs up close in order to make models of them, because they are protected by law. 'We worked with old samples belonging to the Natural History Museum, which dated from about 1910.'

The end result, however, is a programme so slick that you genuinely cannot tell where the real footage ends and computer-generated images begin. 'There is no intention to deceive, and we are clear about just how far our cameras can go,' says Peter. 'But the picture we've been able to build up goes further than my wildest dreams.'

Those viewers who like their baby animals to look like cute little furballs will be relieved to know that other episodes in the series offer a more conventional peek inside animal wombs.
One looks at cats, offering glimpses of the foetal development of the domestic cat, and also that of the lion, with 4-D ultrasound technology showing our feline friends stretching in the womb, while infra-red cameras capture a lion cub being born. And dogs, too - from the grey wolf to the miniature Chihuahua; the cameras even capture the tiny unborns panting.

By happy coincidence, Peter's wife became pregnant during the series' production process. Did his professional expertise help his wife much? 'I kept coming up with useful facts about what would be happening to a kangaroo foetus at the particular stage that our baby was also at. I'm not entirely sure she found that helpful. Actually, I think she got a bit annoyed. She'd say, "Would you stop with the stories about cannibalistic sharks. It isn't helping."'

Watching his own little boy's limbs flailing around on the ultrasound screen provided, perhaps, the most powerful reminder possible of how diverse the journey to life really is. 'I was struck by how calm the human process is in comparison,' admits Peter. 'It really makes you appreciate what a straightforward ride evolution has given us human beings. We have it pretty easy, really, all things considered.'

Science fan has Professor Stephen Hawking's face tattooed on his leg

A science fan has had Professor Stephen Hawking's face tattooed on his leg - in tribute to the 66-year-old brainbox.

Jack Newton, 23, decided to have his right leg inked with the theoretical physicist's face after reading his best-selling book A Brief History of Time - even though he didn't understand a word of it.

The tattoo - complete with a Monty Python line from the classic Life of Brian film 'He's not the messiah. He's a very naughty boy' written underneath it - has already won two trophies at tattoo conventions.

Mr Newton of Brighton, said: 'I read A Brief History of Time, but to be honest I didn't understand a word, but I respect the man and that's why I got his face tattooed on my leg.

'He has worked on some ground-breaking scientific research and is an amazing example of how illness does not necessarily stop a man from doing great things.

'He's an inspiration to us all.'

Jack, a trainee artist at the Angelic Hall tattoo studios in Brighton, spent seven hours being inked by tattoo artist Stewart Francis।
Stephen Hawking, who has an IQ of 152, suffers from a type of motor neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - or Lou Gehrig's disease - which means he has almost no neuromuscular control.

Twins get ready for Halloween by growing a trick or treat sized pumpkin

Twin brothers were today celebrating setting a new European record by growing a massive pumpkin weighing more than a Mini car.

Ian and Stuart Paton's giant squash weighed in at a staggering 1457lb - more than 104 stone - and had to be lifted by forklift truck.

The pumpkin smashed the previous British record of 1,341lb set by father and son farmers Mark and Frank Baggs last month.

It also trumped the European record of 1357lb set by a Belgian grower last week।
The record-breaking pumpkin took 129 days to grow and was weighed using a special winch device at the Annual Pumpkin Show in Netley, near Southampton, Hants.

The Patons used a trailer pulled by a Volvo estate car to transport their giant vegetable to the show at Netley's Royal Victoria Country Park where it was weighed in front of witnesses.

It was planted in a greenhouse in April and needed one and a half tonnes of manure to reach its current size.
Ian and Stuart, both 47, run the Pinetops nursery in Lymington, New Forest, and held the British record one year ago with a pumpkin weighing 1,188lb.

Ian said the pair were delighted to reclaim their title.

He said: "It's nice to have the record back because we had it a couple of years ago with a pumpkin weighing 1,124lb and then last year with one at 1188lb.

"This is the biggest and best so far. No one else will beat it this year.

"Stuart and I are always looking ahead and we are now going to try to grow another pumpkin to beat the world record this time next year.

"It's all about having a bit of luck and the right seeds - and we've definitely got the right seeds so it's just a matter of time now.
pumpkin


"We grow our best ones in a greenhouse to keep the wind off and plant them in one and a half tonnes of manure.

"At it's fastest stage this one was growing at 30lb a day - that's more than two stone.

"Pumpkins do most of their growing at night and it may even have managed up to 50lb in 24 hours if it was as warm as 25 degrees celsius overnight." An original Mini motor car weighs 1360lb (617kg).

The average pumpkin weighs about five pounds and takes up to three months to mature.

To establish a British record, pumpkin growers must have their vegetable weighed and photographed in front of witnesses at a recognised event.

They must then send photographs and documentary evidence to the website 'bigpumpkins.com,' which keeps British records.

The world's heaviest-ever pumpkin weighed in at 1,689lbs and was grown by Joe Jutras of Rhode Island, USA, in 2007.

But expert Clive Bevan reckons climate change means British farmers will soon be competing with their bumper crops.

He said: "Pumpkins love lots of sun, showers and humidity which is why Americans have always grown the biggest pumpkins but soon we may be able to able to grow them as big."

Controversial St Pancras frieze scrapped after train suicide image sparked fury from victims' families

Artwork showing a skeleton driving a train and a commuter appearing to fall on to the tracks has been pulled from its planned rail station exhibition amid fierce criticism.

The image was one of many featured on a frieze for a controversial sculpture planned for St Pancras in London.

However train drivers and families of suicide victims condemned the parts of the controversial frieze because its insensitivity to those who have died on the rail network.

It was due to be installed at the foot of The Meeting Place - the 30ft sculpture of a couple embracing - which was unveiled at the station last year.
But the chief executive of London & Continental Railways - which owns St Pancras - has issued instructions for work to be stopped on the basis that the image was 'completely unsuitable'.

Rob Holden is said to have been shocked at the sculpture's concept, having only discovered what was planned over the weekend.

A spokesman for the company said: 'The frieze as originally suggested will not go ahead and work on it has stopped.'

He added that the particular image could be replaced with something else to enable the frieze to go ahead in an amended form, but that no decision had been made.
grim reaper

Other images featured on the frieze include soldiers going to war and emergency workers dealing with the 7/7 bombings - an attempt to depict real-life on the railways through art.

London & Continental Railways commissioned the work and discussed the plans with sculptor Paul Day.

The 41-year-old sculptor said he hoped for a solution because the artwork would be incomplete until the frieze was added.

He said: 'I sent drawings to LCR in July and have had meetings with people at the level below Mr Holden to talk about the reasons for the images. I welcomed constructive criticism to make my work more appropriate and powerful.

'I am disappointed that Mr Holden appears to have been kept out of the loop.

'I have always been open, honest and transparent. I am not an artist who seeks to shock.

Mr Day, who is based in France, said the image was created in a tragi-comic style meant to be a metaphor for the way people's imaginations ran wild.

He added: 'The imagination and real life are often intermingled.

'It's a work of art with a joyful composition, like a ballet, albeit with a subject matter that on face value is tragic.

'Tragedy in art is about creating hope out of drama - through the beauty of the image but also by going beyond the image.'
Mr Day said his current St Pancras sculpture - the embracing couple in The Meeting Place - represented the ideal, while the images planned for the frieze depicted the counter-balance of emotions and experiences of real-life and people's imaginations.

He added that it was meant to be thought-provoking and uplifting.

He said: ''The whole relief is about railways, people and journeys.

'Any separation makes us aware of the value of what we are losing and puts things into perspective.

'I trust the public to be intelligent enough to appreciate the way in which the images were intended.'

Pictured: The amazing monkey waiters that serve tables in a Japanese restaurant

A Japanese restaurant has changed the face of customer service by employing two monkeys to help with the table service. The Kayabukiya tavern, a traditional 'sake house' north of Tokyo has employed a pair of uniformed Japanese macaque called Yat-chan and Fuku-chan to serve patrons. Twelve-year-old Yat-chan is the crowd-pleaser as he moves quickly between tables taking customer drink orders. The younger of the two, Fuku-chan is quick to give the diners a hot towel to help them clean their hands before they order their drinks, as is the custom in Japan. Yat-chan and Fuku-chan, who are both certified by the local authorities to work in the tavern are well appreciate by customers, who tip them with soya beans. 'The monkeys are actually better waiters than some really bad human ones,' customer Takayoshi Soeno said. Tavern owner Kaoru Otsuka, 63, originally kept the monkeys as household pets - but when the older one started aping him he realised they were capable of working in the restaurant. 'Yat-chan first learned by just watching me working in the restaurant,' he said.

'It all started when one day I gave him a hot towel out of curiosity and he brought the towel to the customer.'

A regular of the tavern, 58-year-old Shoichi Yano, says the animals are like her children.

'Actually, [they're] better,' she said. 'My son doesn't listen to me but Yat-chan will.'

Some clients, like retiree Miho Takikkawa, say Yat-chan appears to understand their exact orders.

We called out for more beer just then and it brought us some beer," she said. "It's amazing how it seems to understand human words.' The monkeys work in shifts of up to two hours a day due to Japanese animal rights regulations. But the owner is hoping to bring up the next generation of monkey waiters, and is already training three baby monkeys to work as waiters. Watch the skilled monkey waiters at work

The amazing photographs that show the world's most famous landmarks replaced by cheap souvenirs

At a moment's glance this picture could be the real Big Ben.

But then you notice the hand below and the incredible optical illusion is revealed.

Tourist Michael Hughes today unveiled his extraordinary holiday snaps of the world's famous landmarks - perfectly blended with cheap souvenirs.

Michael, 56, stumbled across his unusual technique in 1998 and has perfected it after travelling to hundreds of famous sights.

His series of stunning photos include a Golden Gate fridge magnet slotted ideally into the San Francisco landscape.


A plastic Eiffel Tower toy between the camera and the steel structure creates an appearance that the top of the Paris landmark has been painted red, yellow and blue.

And a Big Ben money bank positioned next to the houses of parliament eclipses the original so well it could be mistaken for the real version.

Michael also held The Beatles' Abbey Road album in front of the famous London zebra crossing so it appears that the band members are actually walking across the road.


He has travelled to over 200 countries and has a collection of nearly 100 similar shots - but incredibly says he stumbled on the idea by accident.

British-born Michael, 56, who emigrated to Berlin, Germany with wife Marion, 52, and daughter Lea, 14, in 1983, said: 'I was on the tourist platform at the Lorelei cliffs next to the river Rhine when I held up a postcard I bought for my daughter.

'I was amazed because it just seemed to fill a massive grey hole that was in the sky and it was the exact position the photographer had taken the picture from.

'After that I noticed coffee cups from a shop near the Statue of Liberty had the statue printed on so I poured my drink on the floor, and position it in front of the statue.

'Since then taking the pictures has developed into a hobby and a passion to the point where I have been taking trips recently just to photograph a souvenir next to its landmark.'

Michael, who travels extensively with his job, said the hobby has progressed into a 'sport with its own rules'.

He arrives at the destination, visits the nearest souvenir and buys the cheapest souvenir.

Michael then takes up to 50 photographs with a wide angle lens on a digital camera until he has the ornament positioned in exact proportion to the landmark.
Enlarge Michael Hughes

He has photographed the Egyptian pyramids and Sphinx, London's red buses and the Berlin Brandenburg - all combined with their souvenirs.

The pictures have earned Michael more than 5 million hits on file-sharing website Flickr and an invite to appear on America's prime-time The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Michael, who works as a freelance photographer in Germany, added: 'I used to be a souvenir snob and I'd only buy the most expensive ornaments.

'Now I've turned that on its head by using cheap ones and doing this childish idea of putting them in the picture.

'Several photographers had toyed with the idea and some people do things like putting fingers above buildings but I'm the only person to do this.

'Thankfully it's actually very difficult to do it properly so nobody can copy me, though they do try.'

Michael has released 20 of the best images in a book called Souvenirs published by graphic designers Fivefootsix based in London.

He said: 'Souvenirs are actually something to prove somebody has had a life and they have been somewhere important.

'They are part of something sentimental that most people didn't like to admit to - I think they're pretty damn weird.'