Christmassy Echo headline

I could tell it's nearly Christmas today when we drove past the papershop and one of the headlines on the Echo boards was "Man has tongue bitten off in assault."

Now obviously that's horrific. But it did make me wonder what the full story was - which I suppose is the point of the boards. I wondered if the assaulter was a man or a woman, because it's bad enough if a member of the opposite sex bit off your tongue, but, as a bloke, to think there's a french-kissing thug roaming the streets waiting to pounce on another victim is even more worrying.

And then there's the aftermath. You can imagine the reporting being something like this: "The victim described his attacker as 'mmmth phththth mmphthfth'."

Which wouldn't be much help really.