A gay teenager has been chosen as carnival queen by a small Somerset town. David Bridge, 15, will parade through the streets of Axbridge wearing a dress, tiara and high heels. He auditioned in front of the mayor, who didn’t have the heart to turn him down, reported The Sun. “It seemed fun and I thought I’d enjoy dressing up,” said David, pictured right. Just four people applied to head the parade, so mayor Barry Hamblin named two previous queens as princesses, picked a 16-year-old girl as queen with David as “alternative queen”. Said one member of the selection committee: “It’s hard enough to get people involved as it is.”

Crimebusting nuns of the week

A suspected thief was chased through the streets of Amsterdam by two nuns on bicycles. The chase began when one of the sisters thought she recognised a man walking past the convent as the thief who had stolen money from the building two weeks earlier. She invited him in for a drink, but her suspect fled and snatched a bicycle from a passer-by. The nuns jumped on their bicycles to give chase but the suspect shook them off in a residential district.

Dimwit of the week

An illegal immigrant made an elementary error when he pretended to be French at a checkpoint in Cyprus — he was wearing an England football shirt. The Senegalese man presented a forged French passport to officials at the border between Turkish northern Cyprus and the Greek south, but a police spokesman explained: “Being a football fan, the officer found it highly unlikely that a Frenchman would want to wear an England football jersey.”

Squatters of the week

An elderly couple were driven out of their homes by vicious squirrels. The squirrels seized their chance to move in when Heinz Steinhaeuser came out to pick up his newspaper. They drove out his wife Brunhilde and kept the couple out of the house for two hours. Heinz, from Verden in Germany, eventually called the fire brigade, who found the squirrels hiding in a bed.

Surprise customer of the week

A village shopkeeper last week found himself chauffeuring the Queen. Russell Town was working at his shop in Ardminish, on the Hebridean island of Gigha, when Princess Anne parked her bicycle outside and asked if the village had a taxi service. Russell explained there was no taxi, but agreed to pick up her majesty in his people carrier. “The Queen was lovely,” he said. “I thought I would give her a bit of peace and remained quiet, but she was a real chatterbox. When I saw my daughter at the side of the road and pointed her out, the Queen waved at her.”