In it for the long runs: Walliams

Comedian David Walliams has successfully completed his attempt to contract chronic diarrhoea in aid of charity.

In order to guarantee that the disease took hold the Little Britain star spent eight consecutive days swimming the length of the River Thames for Sport Relief – a distance of 140 miles.

Previously Walliams had swum across both the English Channel and the Strait of Gibraltar to raise money for the charity, but not in one go.

The 40 year-old is reported to have first come up with the idea of the Diarrhoeathon after reading that people in their seventies were regularly swimming the channel, thus demonstrating how straightforward his previous achievements had become.

His attempt was given a boost by Thames Water when the water company confirmed they had helpfully dumped 500,000 cubic metres of raw sewage into the river in the London area. Other bonuses along the route included swimming near widespread filth in Reading and in close proximity to massive parasites in Windsor.

Members of the public have been urged to join Walliams in ‘Giving a Shit’ by donating money via his official website.

Fan of the pool: Rooney

The future of British swimming has been assured thanks to England international footballer Wayne Rooney.

Respected academic periodical The Sun has reported that the Manchester United forward’s son Kai [sic] is taking swimming lessons close to the family home in Cheshire.

The two year-old is said to very much enjoy swimming and the 30-minute lessons help to build his confidence. At £600 the lessons are clearly designed to fast-track the youngster to aquatic greatness and certainly not priced to simply take advantage of Rooney’s weekly salary of £160,000.

Though British Swimming remain tight-lipped on the subject, attracting the offspring of someone with such conspicuous sporting talent is a major coup and, at a height of 5′ 9″, Rooney senior is not far off the average height for a member of the Olympic swimming team – albeit the women’s team.

‘Usually when Wayne Rooney pays £600 for watersports it something completely different.’ said a source close to the couple, though clearly a different source from the one quoted by The Sun.

With Team-mates: Parry

British Olympic swimmer Steve Parry has demonstrated that his comeback is well under way by taking part in a charity relay swim across the Irish Sea.

The 34 year-old is swimming as part of the Samsung Galaxy SII Swim team that hope to raise £1,000,000 in aid of Cancer Research UK. The team are already nearly a quarter of the way to meeting their target, but are still searching for more sponsorship.

It was The Wobbly Block who broke the exclusive news of Parry’s plans to return for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. However, up until now details of his training regime have remained a closely guarded secret.

Joining the bronze medal winner are a mix of celebrities and members of the public including Pamela Stephenson, Jenny Frost, Olly White, Ronan Keating, Nikki Fraser and Jason Bradbury. Unfortunately it was not possible to ascertain from the list of names provided who was a celebrity and who was a member of the public.

Event organiser and celebrity virgin Richard Branson was sadly forced to withdraw from the team at the last minute after Kate Winslet set fire to his house.

For more information about Steve Parry’s comeback visit: www.ParryComeback.com.

To the rescue: RNLI

A group of swimmers taking part in an open water event to raise money for the RNLI have had to be rescued by the RNLI after they got into difficulty.

According to organisers, 53 swimmers started the 3.8km swim at Joss Bay near Broadstairs in Kent. 25 of those taking part were then unable to complete the course and needed to be rescued.

John Ray, a spokesperson for the RNLI, said that the organisation had not been consulted about the location of the event, and if they had, they would have informed the group it was a dangerous area for swimming.

‘We heard about this event only when we read about it in the local paper on Friday,’ he said. ‘We were amazed by the event’s poor safety support and the fact that locally we didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Isn’t ironic, don’t you think?’ he added. ‘It’s like rain on your wedding day, a free ride when you’ve already paid, it’s the good advice that you just didn’t take and who would have . . . Hang on, isn’t that just bad luck rather than irony?’