Join the aristocracy?

Sir Benjamin Slade is still searching for any distant relatives to be the heir to his estate, having met but not signed up the American indie rock singer Isaac Slade of The Fray last year.  Now he's keen for a TV company to make a programme to help him find the right heir for Maunsel House in Someset.  It sounds like he's got a fairly long list of criteria, if you're a Slade thinking of applying:

 

"I have said that drug-takers are out, which upset the people of Amsterdam where the entire population seems to be on drugs," he explained. "I have also said that I don't want a communist, because they would give it all away and because I don't think Stalin was any good, or Castro.

 

"I don't want homosexuals, because they don't breed. I don't want Guardian readers, because this is a Guardian-free household. Independent readers are marginal.

"I had an email from Papua New Guinea and sent them a reply. I'd rather like to go there, although there aren't any Slades in Papua New Guinea, but I do worry about getting eaten or speared. So I sent them an email saying, 'Do your women have bones in their noses and if they have them how then can I give them a bit of tonguey?'

"I also asked about bows and arrows. I said we hadn't used them since Agincourt. I never got a reply. I suppose it's lucky no one got hold of the email; it could have got me in an awful lot of trouble."

- Independent, 27 February 2008