Well, this is nice…

As one does, I was just browsing through the latest press releases from Thames Water when I came across this wonderful description of their latest achievement – the successful removal of Britain’s biggest fatberg.

FATBERG! DEAD AHEAD!

Well, quite. But honestly, given the choice between hitting a big block of ice in the freezing North Atlantic or crashing into this, you’d wanna go all 1912, no questions asked.

And why? (and yes, I know that’s a question) Because here’s what a fatberg is:

The bus-sized lump of wrongly-flushed festering food fat mixed with wet wipes formed in drains under London Road in Kingston, Surrey.

Gordon Hailwood, waste contracts supervisor for Thames Water said: “While we’ve removed greater volumes of fat from under central London in the past, we’ve never seen a single, congealed lump of lard this big clogging our sewers before. Given we’ve got the biggest sewers and this is the biggest fatberg we’ve encountered, we reckon it has to be the biggest such ‘berg in British history.”

“Bus-sized”? *dry heave*

county-clean-fatberg-image

Says Gordon:

“The sewer was almost completely clogged with over 15 tonnes of fat. If we hadn’t discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston.”

Which would have been entertaining, if nothing else.

I bet Gordon is the life and soul at dinner parties though.

“So Gordon, anything interesting happened at work lately?”
“Well, funny you should ask…”

I foresee a Weight Watchers contract coming his way in the very near future…

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