hackbash

I love the BBC’s most emailed and most read lists, partly because they help you spot interesting stories you might have missed, but largely because they show you where its readers’ collective mind is at: in the gutter.

Every now and then, particularly prurient and snigger-worthy stories resurface as a new wave of people dig them out and email them around.

Regular Beeb readers may be familiar with Bejing’s penis emporium, for example. Every now and then, there’s a rash of people reading Condoms ‘too big’ for Indian men. Interestingly, the reappearance of this story often heralds the return of Large condoms for S African men.

Mountain goat

Few can have missed Sudan man forced to ‘marry’ goat, however, which still seems to crop up from time to time. Seven months after it was first published in February 2006, the story’s seemingly timeless popularity elicited a post from Adam Curtis in the editor’s blog.

Now, though, it faces competition from Bike Sex Man, the trial of whom has featured regularly on the site over the last week or so. Stories about this poor soul have been hanging about the most read and most emailed lists – perhaps because it’s hard to believe that, however weird it is to have sex with a bike behind a closed, locked door, it can get a man put on the sex offenders register.

Meanwhile on a sad note, it turns out that Rose, the Sudanese goat seemingly immortalised in the story, has turned out to be mortal after all.

As one wag contributor to the BBC put it, bleated condolences.

Tags: bbc, bike sex, condoms, goat marriage, most emailed, most read, penises