Outside Edge: Life's a riot for the country set

So now we know. That bible of Middle England, Country Life, has revealed the 39 steps to a better life, or 39 skills that all young people should master.

These include obvious stuff that we can all do, like handling a shotgun and riding a horse to "jackaroo standard", but it also calls upon us to sustain a 10-shot rally at tennis, score a cricket match, sail a boat across the Solent and – perhaps most difficult of all – slip away from a football riot.

That's at No 36, just above "Address a member of the Royal Family". It may only be a cultural thing but strangely there's no mention of kung fu card-dealing.

Bai Dengchun, 23, from Qingdao in China has shown off this skill on China's Got Talent. He wasn't very good at poker and used to throw his cards away in disgust, then noticed how accurate he was. Now he can slice a cucumber in half from 16 feet away and knock cigarettes out of people's mouths.

You had better play your cards right.

114.1

Miles per hour achieved in a motorcycle hearse by "Heaven's Angel", Vicar Ray Biddiss (or is that Badass?), to break one of the more bizarre Guinness World Records at Elvington airfield, York. The 57-year-old was riding his 2.3-litre, three-cylinder Triumph Rocket. How much hearse power is that?

Top-shelf shenanigans on top deck

It seems rugger buggers can't get away with anything these days after two players in the University of Gloucestershire rugby team admitted performing lewd acts while naked on a bus.

Ryan Lissamore and Oliver Graham allegedly masturbated in the nude on the top deck of the No 94 bus from Cheltenham to Gloucester, while four others admitted charges of outraging public decency. Since the incident, all rugby and football teams at the college have been disbanded.

Fancy tarring footballers with the same brush... Brett Henderson was tasered and arrested by police in Cincinnati, Ohio, after running the Flying Pig marathon in the nude. He claimed that he had borrowed a pair of shorts but found he couldn't hold them up, adding that he once took part in a race in San Francisco where nudity had been encouraged. He certainly crossed a line.

Good week

Corporal Mark Ward, a Manchester City supporter who was awarded the Military Cross after serving in Afghanistan, was chosen to present the winners with the FA Cup at Wembley...

Jeanne Socrates, a 68-year-old former teacher from London, became the oldest woman to sail solo around the world – in 2008 she crashed 12 miles short...

Scott Huntly, 49, from Edinburgh performed 105 bungee jumps in seven and a half hours to break the world record at Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa.

Bad week

Nathan van Someren, a rugby league player with Simpson Tigers in Australia, was sent off because the referee said his mohawk haircut could endanger other players...

Takahiro Masukawa of Nagoya Grampus was sent off after five seconds of the J-League match against Shimizu S-Pulse in Japan...

Jonathan Fell was fined £80 for not keeping his skateboarding dog Bodhi on a lead in Brighton after he knocked over two pedestrians.

Laser specialist drifted way off course

Britain's sailing hopes for the 2012 Olympics have been blown off course – if not out of the water – after Jon Emmett, a former world Laser champion, had to be rescued along with four students in the Channel during a training exercise at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, which will host next year's Olympic sailing events.

They were preparing for the World Championships in San Francisco when they became becalmed in a dangerous stretch of water known as "The Race" and drifted for two hours. Emmett has since been suspended from his duties.

Meanwhile, Austrian Olympic swimmer Jakub Maly had to be rescued after he dug a seven-foot-deep hole in the sand on Pompano beach in Florida and jumped in, only to become buried beneath the surface. His colleagues at the training camp clawed away at the sand so he could breathe, then 60 firemen, lifeguards and a trench rescue team freed him before the sands of time slipped away.