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A NewsBiscuit investigative team provided this statement from 'Barry'.


'It started out innocent enough. Grandad would let me have a Werther's Original when I was round at his house. Then one day, when he wasn't watching, I helped myself to one of his peppermint balls. That was it. I would spend my pocket money on Polos. They lost their zing after a while and I moved onto the stronger Trebor mints.

I couldn't stop. Even when I had to get teeth pulled 'cos all the sugar made my teeth rot. I kept wanting stronger and stronger hits. Eventually, a friend offered me a Fisherman's Friend. That was it. I was up to half a packet a day.


'Happily, my family staged an intervention and arranged a consultation with a specialist. They're easing me off the strong stuff, little by little. I'm currently on a packet of Halls Mentholyptus Extra Strength. It's been tough going, but I feel that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope to be on Cheese and Onion crisps by the end of 2025.'


We wish 'Barry' well in his struggle.



Image credit: Carl Spencer, licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/





Mr Graham Sawdust of Budleigh Salterton has called on the NatWest Bank to be more creative and open-minded in the way it thinks about debt.


'OK, so you could argue I owe them hundreds of thousands of pounds, and made an undertaking to pay it back in monthly instalments,” he admitted. “And there’s a way to see it that I’ve failed to make these payments for the last few months.


'But I think that’s a very narrow-minded way of considering wealth. I mean, how can you put a price on hearing the first cuckoo of spring? The feel of the sun on your face and the wind in your hair? The smile of your baby girl the first time she sees the King Charles spaniel puppy you’ve just bought her?'


When it was pointed out that Mr Sawdust hasn’t just bought a puppy and doesn’t have a daughter, he said these things were just examples, and the bank was being too literal yet again.


”It seems to me, if you want to know how wealthy a man is, you should count his friends.”


The bank said they were very happy to hear Mr Sawdust had such good friends, and hoped they had comfortable sofas as that’s where he’d be sleeping for the foreseeable future. 

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