A very long time ago, a large group of us had a night of drinking around 3 miles from our small town. With a drunken adolescent sense of mob mentality, a sprinkle of rebellion, and a bucket load of mindless teenage stupidity, we descended upon the town to cause some trouble. We wanted to put our stealth skills to the test, and devised a plot to separate into multiple teams of 4. The name of the game was Gnome Hunt, and the aim was a heist that would make Danny Ocean shit his pants.

We agreed on a time limit of 2 hours where we would rendezvous back at the threshold of the town, count up scores, and fade back into the rural night from whence we emerged.

Quickly, the game evolved from simple gnomes, as drunken brains decided larger scores would net more points, so why settle?

After the 2 hours had passed we all met up again with our prizes. We had no scoring mechanic, of course, so we just all decided “good game”, shook hands, and sauntered back into the dark countryside.

Left behind, on a wall at the entrance to a housing estate, was a glorious display of all sorts of garden ornaments, arranged in a way that would make B&Qs seasonal team take pause.

The following weeks were a blaze of entertainment. The local paper had a photo of the full display, and a piece written as to the mystery of it all. Locals played along, with “wanted” and “have you seen this gnome?” Posters put up around town. All in all, the town seemed to enjoy a good laugh at the whole thing. None the wiser that it was simply reckless abandon from stupid, yet polite, drunken teens.

I got in the paper for googling “seven year old beavers”

Me, waaay back in 1976…

Local paper, local tv news and radio 4 for organising a toad road crossing when the colony turned out to be the largest recorded in the UK one year.

Local tv when I was the pagan chaplain for some local prisons,

National tv news for a couple of Greenpeace protests.

My elbow featured on the cover of Time magazine for another protest once.

I appeared in some Portillo documentary or other, and briefly in a couple of episodes of Coast, all because of where I worked at the time.

Me and some friends won first place in a fictional stock exchange competition which was held in our province for economics classes. About 20 years ago. We solely invested in tanks, firearms and christmas trees. Arrived high as kites to the award ceremony about one hour late. Needless to say our teacher wasn’t too happy with us. Our team’s name? Lords of destruction. News article and photo featured in the local newspapers.

Me and my sister were chosen to give Princess Anne flowers outside the High Court in Edinburgh when I was a kid. I liked that day, because I got to go in a jail cell

When I was 17 there was an article in the paper talking about drug seizures. There was a picture of my car at a traffic stop. I was getting a speeding ticket.

Probably 3 to 5 years old when I had my picture taken and used for an article about child profanity. I had a bar of soap in my mouth for the photo. The early 80s were a different time.

Found an old newspaper in our attic that was a day or two shy of being 100 years old. Great coincidence and perfect for the story to run on the 100th anniversary.

We bought a copy and put both back in the attic, ready for whoever sees it in another 100 years!

There was a tiny article about a project I was involved with. All fine so far, but they wanted a photo of me and a friend for the article.

They sent the photographer to take a handful of crappy posed photos of us, and then they seemingly used the worst one possible, with half-closed eyes or whatever, where my friend looked like he was coming down from a week-long drugs binge, and I looked like I was about to stab the photographer.

They used it again a few years later.

Yes, for an educational achievement.

I was interviewed about my dog for a feature about pet allergies. I’m from the States and live in Columbus, Ohio, so it was a decent circulation.

Boring answer for me: I’m a local councillor and activist, so I’ve been in the paper more times than is strictly good for me. I’ve pointed at potholes and glowered at empty shops and stood freeze-framed in the act of handing over petitions and all the other classics.

The burden of local fame can be overwhelming.

Yeah we were robbed a gun point and held hostage for like an hour before breaking loose and savagely beating the home invaders to the point where they were taken to the hospital before they were taken to jail.

One of them had to wait 5 days before they could even bring him in to court in a wheelchair to be arraigned on charges.

One of the headlines was something like, “home invasion thwarted by Crock-Pot” because I smashed my crock pot over the head robber guys face cutting my hand in the process.

When the police finally showed up an hour after we had called them, they started to arrest me until my mother got there along with my neighbors to vouch that I was the victim.

Edit: I’m an American, I just realized this was a UK community. The ringleader of the robbers that day was a German national, And the two Americans were sentenced to 5 years but he was deported to Germany and spent 2 years in a mental hospital.

Twice, once when I was about 12ish the school club added some native plants to an area of bushland designated as natural land. Local MP came down as a photo op.

Second time was around 17 for a promotional piece for the local cheerleading team I was on. Got some flack at school for that one being a nerd and somehow landing in the cheerleading team.