The headless body recently discovered in a Hampshire river by two local environmentalists has finally been identified, following an exhaustive investigation into local area dental records.
DCI George Carter, of the police, explained to a packed press conference that using dental records to identify a headless male body was a very precise science, which worked on a series of mathematical formulae to determine the precise dimensions of the head, then matching the dimensions to those of the headless corpse.
"We weren't sure that we'd nail it at first," DCI Carter said. "What with it being a nice sunny day, and the pubs being open and what have you. But our boys and girls persevered with due diligence for a good twenty minutes or so before establishing a link between some teeth and the headless corpse. I can now announce that the dead man's name was Mrs Ethel Armstrong, a mother of three, originally from Titchfield, who died in a plane crash in Spain in 1969 on her way to Benidorm."
Insiders doubt that she would have been horseriding when disaster struck.
