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Some people you have never heard of...

Montgomery Splinters

Montgomery Splinters

Celebrated cavalryman who fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, showing considerable courage until his horse sank. Later became an MP, and introduced a bill legalising the sale of individual sausages - previously they had only been available for purchase in packs of eight.

Julia Everet-Sideboard

First person to complete a solo climb of Glastonbury Tor in 1953. Not a difficult ascent, and plenty of people had strolled up there before, it's just that, as luck would have it, she was the first person to have headed up there on her own.

Findus Permanganate

Inventor of the choc ice, which changed the face of frozen dairy produce forever. Also invented raspberry sandals, which didn't.

Ibrahim Munch

Nineteenth century music hall artist who is widely credited with the invention of the human cannonball, and narrowly missed Queen Victoria during a Royal Command Performance in 1878. He is commemorated on postage stamps in Mauritius. Nobody knows why.

Archie Marmalade

Sometimes cited as the godfather of modern chemistry, which is incorrect. More often called the godfather of three-year-old Sally Pastanaker of Melton Mowbray, for which claim there exists more convincing evidence.

Badman Truelove

Badman Truelove

In 1973 one man spent sixteen hours standing on one leg in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. That man was Badman Truelove. Today he lives on the Isle of Wight, but rarely speaks of the incident.

Katya Van Marbles

You won't have heard the name, but you will most certainly have seen the face. Katya's likeness has been used for eighty percent of all the shop window dummies manufactured in the world since 1983. Her bland, almost featureless appearance made her the perfect model, and she was smart enough to negotiate a royalty on every mannequin sold. Now retired, she lives in luxury in Monte Carlo, where she collects antique fans - but you don't really need to know that.

Dame Daphne Oxcart

Dame Daphne Oxcart

Dull people who memorise long lists of facts in order to win pub quizzes will know that Daphne Oxcart won Gold in the javelin throw at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. That's not why she was made a dame - back in those days you had to do a hell of a lot more than chucking sticks about in order to get on the New Year Honours list. She was actually awarded the title for catching a Soviet submarine while on a fishing trip to Lake Windemere. She had it stuffed and mounted, and if you're interested you can see it on display in a museum in Keswick.

Keith Paxo

Keith 'The Beef' Paxo

For years, Keith Paxo told everyone he met that he was the guy who played the kazoo on The Beatles' "Back in the USSR", and for many years he was ridiculed by people who told him that "Back in the USSR" did not feature a kazoo. He was vindicated when the 50th anniversary edition of The White Album was released and his contribution could finally be heard on the remixed version of the song. He can also be heard faintly in the background on "Happiness is a Warm Gun", asking Yoko if she wants salt and vinegar on her chips.

Professor Lorna Substrate

One of the leading biochemists of her generation, Professor Substrate was to the frozen pea what Gordon Parasite was to the aluminium stepladder. Or if you prefer, what Ringo Mezzanine-Amanuensis was to the semi-translucent artificial donkey cover. Take your pick.

Big Dave Tallywacker IV

They didn't call him Big Dave Tallywacker IV for nothing. Oh no, they called him that because that's what it said on the name tag sewn into his underpants. And woe betide anyone who called him anything different.

Sir Dougal Poptart

Not the inventor of the pop tart - that was named in his honour sometime after his demise. Sir Dougal Poptart dedicated his life to climbing drainpipes in Edinburgh. He was a familiar sight to residents, who would often see him grinning through their bedroom windows in the middle of the night, looking windswept and ill. There is a statue of him in Princes Street, but you'll have to look up if you want to see it.

Pancho Simpson

One of the key figures in the Mexican Revolution, Mr Simpson is perhaps not as widely celebrated as some of his fellow revolutionaries because for the duration of the conflict he lived in High Wycombe and never travelled further than Princes Risborough. But hey, someone has to stay at home and sort out the fliers, yeah?

Katy Van Mousecarpet

If you have ever used the phrase "there's no time like the present", then you have Katy Van Mousecarpet to thank, for it was she who devised it. And if you have never used the phrase "there's no time like the present" and you are seriously considering using the phrase "there's no time like the present" then might I suggest that there's no time like the present to start using it.

Mousecarpet used to say it quite a lot, to the point where she had no time left to do anything else. Her friends and family believed that her love of the phrase was a thinly veiled cover for procrastination. Of course, Einstein's theories have since demonstrated that Mousecarpet's thoughts about time are largely inaccurate, but the phrase nevertheless retains a sense of whimsical charm.

Romulus Pervert

A Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, coming somewhere between the funny one with the lisp and the one with the banjo. Romulus's great contribution was the shoe buckle, which at long last solved the problem of keeping one's sandals on one's feet. Prior to this, Rome's streets were perpetually littered with discarded footwear, which hampered public transport and encouraged vermin. He also claimed to have invented the stick, but modern historians now believe that the stick predates the Roman Empire by several hundred years.

Emerson Humpback

Emerson Humpback

Emerson "Clickety-Click" Humpback was the inventor of the retractable pen, and it is thanks to him that generations of schoolchildren have been able to drive their teachers to distraction by sitting at the back of the class and going "click-click-click-click". Humpback struggled for many years to perfect his invention, his chief problem being to find a spring that was capable of retracting the inner "payload" of the pen, but without being so strong that it fired it straight out of the back of the casing and into the wall behind him. His workshop is now a museum, and if you pay it a visit, you'll be able to see many of his early prototypes still embedded in the ceiling.

Pieter Elastoplato

President of the People's Republic of Groinburg, which is a small enclave in Walsall, quite near the M6. Pieter declared independence from the West Midlands in 1988, following a dispute about planning permission for a conservatory. The council continues to challenge his claim of sovereignty, although, due to an administrative error, the United Nations recognises Groinburg as a nation in its own right. In fact, Groinburg is a permanent member of the Security Council and Pieter regularly sends a delegation to New York. The country's major economic activity is claiming expenses, with the added bonus that they don't pay any tax. Incidentally, the disputed conservatory has still not been built, which some might say has rendered the whole exercise somewhat pointless.

Godfrey Spandex

Lord Godfrey Spandex

Inventor of the fully integrated goat milking system, considered to be the single greatest advance in goat milking since the development of pneumatic gloves. His system only works on fully integrated goats and to date no reliable solution exists for non-integrated and partially integrated goats.

Professor Suzi Polyester

Early twentieth century linguist and keen proponent of the Cambridge comma. This now defunct example of punctuation was four times larger than the rival Oxford comma, twice as heavy and approximately 40% curlier. Its use was banned in schools in 1932 on health and safety grounds.

Massive Mathew McCallister

Four times winner of the speed trumping championships. McCallister could fart at a prodigious rate and at speeds in excess of twenty-four feet per second. The average rate for a normal human is ten feet per second. McCallister claimed he was descended from Lord Julius Windbreak, who was Chief Farter to the Court of Queen Elizabeth I. McCallister's talented bottom has attracted the interest of NASA and the Russian military, and prompted the unceasing disgust of his neighbours and members of his immediate family.

Keith Marx

The ninth Marx Brother. He only made one film with the group, before he left to start a business filling horse troughs with custard for the benefit of sweet-toothed donkeys. Rumours abound that the real reason he left was because he fell out with Harpo over the correct way to fit a safety guard on a capstan lathe. He disappeared in 1975 and is still wanted by the police, who want to question him on the whereabouts of the sixth, seventh and eighth Marx Brothers.

Pettruchio the Happy Chicken

Perhaps the world's happiest chicken, a title which admittedly is not too hotly contested. Pettruchio lived on a farm in Alabama in the 1950s, and whenever anyone went past, they would stop and say, "What the hell is that chicken laughing about?" We never did find out what it found so funny, but it was friends with a pig who occasionally had a fit of the giggles, and people speculate that they were sharing some private joke.

Florance Avocado

Florence Avocado

Growing up on a farm in eighteenth century Yorkshire, there was very little for Florence to do with her spare time, since table tennis was banned and the first Nintendo console wouldn't be invented until 1892. Instead, she dedicated her life to helping animals in distress - particularly worms, which she used to untie when they had got themselves all tangled up. This dovetailed nicely with the chief pastime of her brother, Granville Avocado, an evil bastard who would spend his free time tying them in knots in the first place.

John Henry Mastodon

John Henry Mastodon

In 1962, John Henry Mastodon climbed Mount Everest the hard way - up the inside. Using nothing more sophisticated than a pickaxe, a trowel and a small penknife, the intrepid mountaineer tunnelled his way up the middle of the mountain. The hole he created still exists today and is used to run electrical cables and water pipes up to a small gift shop at the summit, where you can buy a commemorative tea towel that celebrates the achievement.

Bartholomew Lungs

Billed as The Man Who Talks to Penguins, Bartholomew Lungs toured his act around the provincial theatres of the UK in the forties and fifties. Lungs claimed to be able to talk to many species of penguin, including rockhoppers and emperors. Anyone fortunate enough to have witnessed his show would have seen about a dozen penguins lined up on stage, eight of them stuffed, while Lungs spoke to them at length on a variety of subjects including agricultural techniques, new developments in automobile manufacture and football. He spoke in English, the penguins never answered back and those that were still alive would frequently get bored and waddle off stage. Whenever people complained about the birds' lack of a response, Lungs explained that they were all mesmerised by what he had to say, as evidenced by their rapt and thoughtful expressions.

Malinky Formica

Someone has to hold the world record for eating the most spaghetti hoops with a cocktail stick whilst being on fire and parachuting out of a plane, and that person is Malinky Formica. This was not his real name, of course. Oh no, that would be silly. His real name was Malinky Jones. Although Malinky achieved the record, he did not survive the attempt because, you know, fire. By the way, if you're interested, the record is three.

Rancid Alan Grease

Grease briefly came to the nation's attention in the 1970s when he claimed to be the last remaining descendant of the Plantagenet line and therefore the rightful King of England. Minimal research was able to reveal that he was actually a self-employed plumber from Leicester, trading under the name "Speedyplumb". However, even this claim was disputed by one of his former customers, who said that he was still waiting for him to come and fit a shower, and that he didn't think the workshy git knew one end of a plunger from the other.

Vespasian Droid

You've all heard of Giovanni Schiaparelli, who was the first person to discover canals on Mars. No? Oh, well you have now. Anyway, Vespasian Droid is the astronomer who discovered railways on Saturn, monorails on Mercury and a helicopter pad on Uranus. He died tragically when crossing a road in Taunton, when he was too late in discovering the big red bus that was heading towards him at speed.

Hippocathius

Hippocathius

Greek mathematician who invented the four-sided triangle. Although the four-sided triangle is still used in some branches of engineering and has certain specialised functions in microcircuitry, it has been largely superseded in common everyday use by the square.

Alphonse Lionheart Bullett

Eighteenth century adventurer, whose real-life exploits became the source material for a series of popular pamphlets. Accounts differ as to his eventual fate. Opinion has it that he was eaten by a giant octopus in the Indian Ocean in 1786. However, there are those who believe that the facts have become confused, and that what really happened is that he ate a giant octopus in an Indian restaurant and went home early to sleep it off. An unpaid restaurant bill currently on display in a museum in Mumbai seems to confirm this version of events.