For sale: 8000 cheap air-horns

THE man who turned up at Brands Hatch World Superbikes with 10,000 boating-spec fog horns for sale seemed to have the world at his feet…

With a crowd of over 100,000 predicted and a monopoly on the market for 110-decibel acoustic cannons within the circuit perimeter, it looked like he was going to shift the entire truckload at the £4.99-a-time asking price and still get back home in time to watch the races on BBC.

Tragically for our nameless entrepeneur’s retirement plans, it didn’t work out that way. Pressurised canisters might be fine in the cold temperatures of the North Sea or cool Lake Windermere, but they’re not quite so suited to the roasting sunlight of Brands – the kinds which pushed track temperatures to over 40-degrees centigrade. So it can’t have been too surprising when one exploded in the heat…

Thankfully, the only thing injured was the stall-holder’s pension fund: health and safety officers swooped in and banned him from selling any of the 8000 remaining bombs-in-waiting.

So if at Brands you heard a drawn out groan of a man kissing profits goodbye, drowned out only by the sound of muffled screeches as air-horns went Nagasaki in a trader’s box van, now you know why.