A runner defied some of the warmest spring temperatures in the UK to complete a 1,000-mile run from John O’Groats to Lands’ End yesterday – dressed as the Mr Men character Mr Happy.

Andy Jackson, 26, ran the gruelling distance in 71 days, running at an average of 22 miles a day, to raise money for the Children with Leukaemia charity.

As he finished in Cornwall he admitted that the warm temperatures in March, April and now May, had made the run even more gruelling than it would have been as a normal runner. He picked out the Lake District and the Bath area of Somerset as his favourite to run through thanks to their beautiful scenery.

Mr Jackson was diagnosed with leukaemia when he was 18 and ran his first marathon weeks before his life-saving bone marrow transplant. He later astounded doctors by producing his first “healthy” blood cells in record time. (PA)

Accent syndrome

A woman from Oregon has been diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome after waking from dental surgery with a British-sounding accent.

Karen Butler said: “I had just had surgery, so at first we assumed it was because of all of the swelling, but within a week the swelling went down and the accent stayed.”

Dr Ted Lowenkopf said Ms Butler has foreign accent syndrome, which is so rare that only 60 confirmed cases have been documented around the world. (PA)

No ‘Robin’, no role

A 91-year-old New Zealand war veteran has been forced to put his new career as a modern-day Batman on hold because he is not allowed to be out fighting crime alone at night.

John Bray considers he is more than qualified to deal with the evildoers in the town of Waipawa, having served with the Long Range Desert Group, a reconnaissance and raiding unit in north Africa in World War II. So he enlisted as a member of the local community patrol, an organisation which acts as “the eyes and ears” of the police, cruising the streets at night, reporting any suspicious activity.

Like Batman, he started out with a partner but decided to go solo when his Robin equivalent, a man in his late 80s, kept falling asleep on duty. Now he has been told by the local head of the community patrol organisation that he cannot work alone and he must find a new sidekick if he wants to get back on the roster. (AFP)

Rowdy passengers

A Norwegian plane made an unscheduled stopover in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Saturday after a fight between three drunken passengers. The men – two Norwegians and a Swede – who were in their thirties were led away by the police.

The Boeing 737-800 which came from nearby Oslo continued its flight to Larnaca in Cyprus after nearly 30 minutes.

A Swedish woman, who was to get married to one of the rowdy passengers, also left the plane, police said. (AFP)

The real thing

Exactly 125 years ago an Atlanta pharmacist mixed up a cure for headache and fatigue and stumbled upon the recipe for what has become one of the world’s most recognisable drinks and brand names.

Coca-Cola is celebrating the moment when on May 8, 1886 John Pemberton created a soft drink now sold in more than 200 countries and earning the company a place among the world’s top 100 firms.

Regular Coke remains the world’s favourite soda with a 17 per cent market share, trouncing its rival Pepsi. The recipe is a closely guarded secret passed down through the generations, and according to legend safely stashed away in a company vault.

Coca-Cola was a typical by-product of “the golden age of quackery” at the end of the 1800s when many doctors were trying to patent all kinds of medicines for a variety of ailments. The original Coca-Cola most likely tasted different from the liquid today, being a patent medicine with a distinct cocaine kick. (AFP)

Pirates repelled

A retired couple have told how they helped repel a Somali pirate attack on a cruise ship by throwing deckchairs at the machine gun-toting outlaws.

John and Barbara Jeffrey were on a once-in-a-lifetime trip from South Africa to the Mediterranean were socialising on deck late at night when they spotted a small boat following their liner.

A pirate attached a rope to a lower deck and began shinning up it but the holidaymakers threw everything they could at the man and he finally fell into the sea when a German hit him with a flying deckchair.

That enraged the other raiders, who began firing machine guns at the ship, the MSC Melody. Crew members eventually saw off the pirates by using water hoses. (PA)