ONE of the joys of being a journalist is the cargo of post which arrives on your desk each day.

I use the word 'cargo' loosely. Some days the only offerings are Morrisons alerting us to the fact their sausages are on special offer, or perhaps a rural public house announcing the results of a recent shove ha'penny competition.

Yet once in a while some clever (or bored) PR bod sends us something which prevents us from immediately putting it into 'File 13' (the office term for the nearest bin.)

A buzz of excitement was in the air one day as one lucky hack was sent a tub of ice cream, providing an altogether different kind of 'scoop'.

Before a spoon had even scratched the creamy surface, however, it had slipped through the journo's fingers and the whole lot landed face down on the newsroom floor.

On another occasion, more frozen delights arrived in a polystyrene box which could have housed a small family of Eskimos. Unfortunately the recipient was away on holiday when it was delivered, providing days of suspense for the rest of us who were placing wagers on what it contained.

Several days later she arrived back in the office all refreshed and tanned, but her face soon changed colour when she opened the box to be greeted with putrefying cuts of raw chicken.

Then there was the transfusion bag of 'blood', inviting us to the launch of a new range of first aid goods. The grisly relic still hangs in the office to this day.

To introduce their new Texan Barbecue flavour, Pringles sent in a saddle bag, which provoked a loud reaction when I discovered a huge rubber snake at the bottom.

Last Christmas, Wonderbra delivered a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a top model wearing the firm's latest range of lingerie. The 2-D 34B filly even made it to our works Christmas party, and I have to say provided better company than a lot of the Echo staff.

But I believe it's the editor of Prime Time - our magazine for the over 50s - who opens the post with the most measured trepidation.

Articles in her postbag that can be mentioned in a family paper include a do-it-yourself enema together with, lets just say a whole range of things to deal with moisture issues.

Perhaps more luckily for me, the latest thing of ridicule to land on my desk was a recipe book utilising the humble pomegranate.

Nothing wrong with that, I hear you cry, until I reveal it's about three feet long by two feet wide, using paper which probably wiped out a modest rainforest somewhere in Sumatra.

We can't use any of the pictures because the thing won't fit into our scanner, and some of the text is so big it makes your eyes cross just looking at it.

But I guess the folk at the Pomegranate Council have had the last laugh. Hey, it's got their product mentioned in a paper, after all. Besides, I can't even put it into File 13 because it's not physically possible. The only way that brute is getting out of the building is with a fire crew.

First published: November 18