Outside Edge: Scooters told to zimmer down

Last month Edge reported that Colin Furze had "pimped" a mobility scooter so that it could reach speeds of 69mph, and even though the top speed should be 8mph, a 69-year-old couple were mown down by a hit-and-run scooter driver in Mexborough, South Yorkshire. So it comes as no surprise that Norfolk Police have launched a mobility scooter driving school in Norwich. Scootists are not required to take a driving test or hold a licence, nor do they need insurance, and shopkeepers in Great Yarmouth complained that they were knocking over their pavement displays. So now they have to swerve around cones, negotiate kerbs and practise parallel parking. Four elderly residents of Brighton, with a combined age of 303 and six hip and knee replacements between them, have taken the craze a stage further by setting up a scooter display team called the Red Tarts, with red, white and blue smoke billowing out the back like the Red Arrows as they perform to the Dambusters' March. It's a pensioners' penchant.

36.1

Number of miles paced on the touchline by Mick McCarthy, the manager of Wolves, during a Premier League season. The average for top-flight bosses is 15.9 miles, or 25.1 if they are successful in four competitions. Imagine how fit the Touchline Wanderer would be if Wolves ever got into Europe.

Why 'Mad Monday' is a pet hate

As sporting nightmares go, Australian rugby league's Mad Monday is always right up there – often in more ways than one. The first Monday after the end of the regular season is traditionally a time for the teams who don't make the top eight in the National Rugby League to get outrageously drunk. Already this year two players from the Sydney Roosters have been sacked after they were found to have defecated on tables and carpets in their room at a Holiday Inn. The incident came a year after fellow Rooster Nate Myles was suspended for six matches and fined A$50,000 for roaming a hotel drunk and naked, and emptying his bowels in a corridor. Now Canberra Raiders' Joel Monaghan has embarrassed himself even further by having pictures taken of a team-mate's labrador pleasuring him orally. It's a shame the poor dog didn't use his canines.

Good week

Anne Woods, 27-times winner of the World Gurning Championships at Egremont Crab Fair in Cumbria, finally has her status confirmed as the woman who can pull the world's ugliest face by the Guinness Book of Records... Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the 1968 student revolt in Paris, is employed as a football commentator by Canal Plus in France... Eastern Coast Costume shop in Boston, Massachusetts, sells out of Tiger Woods Hallowe'en outfits – which replace the usual arrow through the head with a golf club.

Bad week

Hong Su Jong, North Korean gymnast, is banned for two years after giving three different birth dates for entry to international competition during the past six years... Ice bath enthusiasts have been told by the English Institute of Sport that their hardy habit limits the growth of muscle fibres and is therefore detrimental when athletes are in training... Fit City Ordsall leisure centre in Salford, Manchester, put up a huge banner advertising "Indoor Bowels" – their motto is "Discover what's inside".

Countdown to the end of civilisation?

Amnesty International probably haven't been in touch yet but Countdown should be renamed "Clampdown" after it was revealed that the contestant Jack Hurst was not allowed to publicly derive the word "shitface" from the letters DTCEIASHF. It was deemed unfit for broadcast by Channel 4, the segment was filmed again with a C replacing the R, and Hurst was simply given the word "hardiest" instead. It was unworthy of the Cambridge University maths student who has set a new aggregate points record for the 28-year-old show, 946pts in eight episodes. There was no such delicacy at the National Scrabble Championships, which were won by a transsexual from Carlisle called Mikki Nicholson, wearing a pink wig and pink PVC dress. She used "nads" on her way to the title, and "tit" was also allowed, though fellow finalist Mike Nyman did decline to use his N in laying down "cut". If Channel 4 had televised it, someone would have shouted "Cut!"