Beeston Or Bust!

Several years ago the world was astonished when the remains of former King Richard the Third were unearthed in a Leicester car park.

But did you know that a discovery just as exciting was made at the same time, right here in Beeston?

During the tram construction, workers were digging up the car park where Bargain Booze once stood, when they discovered a large solid cylindrical object. Fearing it was an unexploded bomb, disposal experts were called in to defuse it. However, it wasn't a bomb, but something else that had 'gone off' - several thousand years ago!

It turned out to be a coprolite, which is the academic term for fossilised excrement. So the army were sent packing, and a team from Nottingham University led by Professor Angela Todd were called in to investigate. After careful excavation, they set to work restoring it to its former glory at their lab in the Highfields campus.

Hurts on Chilwell Road is famous the world over for supplying luxury blankets to newborn babies in the British Royal family. But did you know that another local lace factory, the long gone D. D. Mellens once produced a world record breaking bra for Beeston woman Norma Spelk?

Norma was originally born in Lenton, but lived on Wollaton Road from 1921 to 1947, and was well known in the area for having extraordinarily large breasts.

She was a celebrated performer, who had a song and dance routine that involved hauling numerous items out of her cleavage in time to the music. This included a rugby ball, a rolling pin, a string of sausages, finishing with a bottle of whisky which she would proceed to down in one.

Was it this... or this?

The space traveller was described as resembling a human, but was quite grotesque, bright red and wizened, appeared to be close to death, and only communicated in a series of groans.

He was taken to a secret location within the barracks under armed guard, where he was observed for several hours. After rehydrating, it turned out not to be an alien at all, but a badly sunburned and severely hung over man from Mansf ield, who had somehow ended up naked along the canal after a stag do in Nottingham city centre.

It turned out to be the largest single human stool ever recorded in the UK, measuring a whopping 26 inches long by 4 and a half inches wide. Professor Todd and her team concluded that the motion was passed at some time during the stone age, by someone who enjoyed a meatrich diet and must have been very tall.

The fossil is now on display at The British Museum, where it is categorised as exhibit 283719549. However, in a nod to the monarch discovered at the same time, it is affectionately known by museum staff as 'Richard The Turd'.

Norma continually had to repair her undergarments due to wear and tear caused by her act, and eventually commissioned Mellens to manufacture her a purpose-built brassiere in 1937. It was confirmed by Guinness World Records to have been the largest one ever measured, and was used in publicity by local brewer Shipstones. The bra featured in an advert for their Milk Stout, each cup holding a barrel of the beer, suspended by a delivery dray crane outside The Malt Shovel on Union Street.

Norma left Beeston not long after the second world war, to pursue a career in showbiz across the pond in America, under the stage name Norma Snockers. Sadly she didn't make it - she missed the ship she was due to catch from Liverpool after heavy storms had delayed her train, and ended up becoming a nun.