WE read yesterday about a tourist who, while hiking in Yellowstone National Park, fell into a spring full of boiling acid.

“There were no remains left to recover,” said a spokesman.

7 Scared yet... which one fills you with terror?

We also heard troubling news from Australia. Sixty-foot waves full of sharks have been battering the coast of Sydney, knocking whole houses into the seething torrent. In France, the river Seine became so full that paintings and sculptures at the Louvre had to be moved upstairs.

And in America, a massive gust of wind uprooted a beach umbrella which then speared a woman, killing her instantly.

And all of this just weeks after a whole Canadian city was burned to the ground by an out-of-control forest fire.

Meanwhile, in England a man drove his Mercedes into a puddle and rescuers had to break one of the side windows so he could get out.

7 Boiled alive in a Yellowstone hot spring... Credit: Getty Images

My local news programme sent a reporter to provide live coverage of the event as it unfurled but sadly, by the time she arrived, the puddle, and the man, had gone.

It didn’t stop her though. So she stood there, under the “LIVE” banner telling us that the puddle had been quite deep and that if the man had remained in his car, instead of climbing through the window, he could have...

Could have what? Got his trousers wet?

We see this sort of thing time and time again, reporters standing up to their shoelaces in water or snow or fallen leaves, trying desperately to convince themselves and their viewers that a terrible tragedy has occurred.

7 Battered by storms in Sydney... Credit: Splash News

I wish they’d give up. Because in Britain, nature is completely vanilla.

We have missionary position weather — no active volcanoes and earthquakes so mild they wouldn’t even knock over a house of cards.

In all of my lifetime, there has only been one truly enormous weather event in Britain, the Great Storm of 1987. And I slept through it.

No rambler in Britain has ever dissolved in a spring full of boiling acid — more’s the pity.

We have no great white sharks, no disease-ridden mosquitoes, no 20ft snakes and the most dangerous mammal you’re likely to find on a stroll through the countryside is a cow. Which isn’t dangerous at all.

7 Or getting your socks wet thanks to a puddle in Croydon Credit: Alamy

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We do, however, have Jeremy Corbyn who, technically, is a product of nature.

Many say he’s harmless and benign and that because he has face hair he will never have any power to use.

But having watched the Tories tear themselves apart over Brexit, I’m no longer quite so sure.

I really can see the day when he walks into Number 10. And that . . . that would be the biggest catastrophe to hit this country since the plague.





The tan o'clock news

7 Orange bird... please insert your choice of joke here

WHEN I heard people droning on this week about a bird that had dyed itself orange, I thought they were talking about the BBC’s fragrant newsreader Sophie Raworth.

Apparently, she presented a bulletin this week sporting a rather obvious fake tan.

Or it could be she had simply taken in some rays in her back garden.

I’ve printed a large photograph of her this morning so we can all spend a little time trying to work it out.

PRIME TARGET THE Americans working on our new car show for Amazon have been rattled by news that our first location – Johannesburg – has been listed as a possible terrorist target.

They suggested that during our stay we should have armed security and snipers on rooftops.

This has all come as a surprise to the Brits working on the show.

Having lived through the IRA bombing campaign, we have a rather different attitude towards a terrorist threat.

A point made rather well by our football supporters, who arrived in the Muslim hotspot of Marseilles this week and immediately took to the street chanting: “Isis, where are you?”

It’s the modern-day equivalent, I guess, of “Hitler has only got one ball”.

In and out, what's it all about?

7 Serious EU debate in action

WHEN the EU debate began, I was struck by how good-natured it all was.

Opinions were delivered calmly.

People listened with steepled fingers and a thoughtful expression on their faces.

It was democracy at work . . . and it didn’t last.

Now we have both sides hurling insults at one another and coming up with more and more ludicrous claims.

Politicians who want to stay in Europe tell us that we will all die in screaming agony if we leave and Brexit enthusiasts tell us that if we stay, every man woman and child in the entire country will be raped and murdered.

The cost of staying is eight thousand trillion pounds a minute.

The cost of leaving is forty two and a billion and one million.

If we stay, there will be five trillion Muslims in London alone and, if we leave, the NHS will crumble to dust and everyone will get cholera.

It’s madness and it’s stupid and it’s just a lot of politicians making points to try to save or keep their jobs.

Meanwhile, us lot, the actual voters, are completely bewildered.

We are facing a massively important choice and, because the debate has been so juvenile, we are casting our votes based on no worthwhile information at all.

ON ITS DRONE SO, the RAF is working on a drone aircraft that can attack targets without authorisation from a human.

That troubles me.

I don’t doubt for a moment that, in the lab, it is perfectly possible, using clever facial recognition software, for such a thing to perform perfectly. In the same way that the prototype of the iPhone 6 worked perfectly.

But last week mine decided to go wrong for no reason at all.

That’s annoying when it’s a phone. But it would be catastrophic if it were a drone armed with a bank of Hellfire missiles.

Air cars won't take off

7 Air cars... aren't they just... well... 'planes'? Credit: Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

AS we know, a couple of America’s internet billionaires are working hard on reusable space ships, which all sounds very Bond baddie.

But Larry Page, the founder of Google, has apparently gone one stage further and is said to be squirreled away in a special man- cave, working on a flying car.

He has invested £70million in the project and I’m sorry, but I can’t see why.

Because let’s say he succeeds where countless others have failed.

Let’s say he comes up with a car which can sprout wings and take to the skies at the touch of a button.

The idea sounds brilliant. You see there’s a traffic jam ahead so you take off and fly over it.

Wonderful.

But hang on. If you have a car which can fly, why would you ever use it as a car?

Surely you’d fly everywhere in it.

And if you want to fly everywhere, you already have a machine which does the job.

It’s called an aeroplane.