Table Talk

As if relegation wasn't bad enough
Bosses at a Bath pub have shown the yellow card to an operations manager after he tried to rename their pub after his favourite football team. Derrick Smith got the warning after he announced he intended to rename the Crystal Palace the Albion, after West Bromwich Albion. Since Crystal Palace have just been relegated from the Premiership, Smith reckoned it was the perfect time to combine a refurb with a new name. But the pub's managers objected, claiming it would upset customers. Smith has accepted defeat but says he won't give up trying to find another suitable site to rename the Albion.

We're gonna put you in the moo-vies
A Jersey cow opened a Litten Tree pub in Carlisle, Cumbria, despite Hollywood lawyers getting jittery about the cow appearing in public. Constance the cow was signed up to represent Brown Cow Vodka Shake, a new drink and a sponsor of the pub opening. But Hollywood scouts had already talent-spotted the cow and recruited her as the model for a new bovine version of the piglet movie, Babe. The lawyers have insured Constance for $7.5m (£4.1m) and tried to make a series of demands, including flattening flagstones outside the bar and stopping people going near her. But in the end they relented. Iain Macauley, of Brown Cow Vodka Shake, said: "The movie-makers loved Constance's classic cow face and swaying movement. As the movie is going to be computer-generated, she will be scanned and used as the basis for the main character."

So that's why he offered his sand in marriage A newlywed couple shipped five tonnes of sand into a hotel to re-create their Caribbean beach wedding for family and friends who missed it. Jon Williams and Sian Wycherley were married in Barbados but held the reception when they got home. A lorry tipped the sand into the function room of the five-star St David's hotel in Cardiff. Palm trees and a steel band were also brought in, with beach balls for each of the 250 guests.