BIRMINGHAM - Local man, Bill Smiths, had read a story on popular user-generated site TheSpoof.com
"I mean, the headline was slightly funny," he said. "It did make me smirk a little."
After reading the headline, he read the opening sentence which had the strapline and a small sum-up of the main story. After this he opened the page in a new tab, and promptly got bored halfway through the second paragraph.
Smiths, a worker in an office in the city centre, admitted to being bored at 'the predictable format' of the piece. He said that reading the rest of the article gave him 'no extra laughs' and that it was a simple 're-hash' of the headline.
He noted that this isn't the first time that he found a headline amusing. He had previously grinned at headlines about ASDA vs. Tesco and some other wacky Future News stories that were simple rehashings of some 'crazy guy's' view, in addition to something about jelly babies, and another story about Star Trek.
"It's not that I'm not smart or can't understand humour," he said, "it's just that there's a strict near-formulaic approach to writing here. Witty headline then some wad or something."
"That's it really," he said, "I bet you the guy will write a witty headline about some guy finding his headlines witty. Yeah. Like hanging a lampshade."
(You can find more about proverbial lampshade hanging here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging)
