The Wedding That Went Down a Bomb

I'm not one for recommending anybody makes spurious bomb threats, but it's hard not to feel some sympathy for would-be bridegroom Neil McArdle.

The Liverpudlian for some inexplicable reason had decided to get married to a woman described in reports as his fiancee.

There was one small hitch. On the morning of the ceremony McArdle remembered he had forgotten to fill in the paperwork required for the wedding.

Such dilemmas suggest a number of possible courses

1 Jump off the eighth floor of a building
2 Leave your clothes on the beach and disappear for 200 years
3 Make a bomb threat at the aforementioned non marrying venue.

McArdle chose the latter, reports Britain's Guardian newspaper. He could not face telling his fiancee because she had been talking the hind legs off a donkey about the wedding for the last six months to anyone crazy enough to listen.

As she slipped into her white dress, he slipped into a phone box - one of those quaint red things they still have here and there in England.

He called Liverpool register office and said: "This is not a hoax call. There's a bomb in St George's Hall and it will go off in 45 minutes."

When McArdle, his bride and the happy families arrived at the building in the center of Liverpool, nobody was in the mood to throw flowers, although the police had thrown a cordon around the place.

Later when the staff tried to go ahead with the "delayed" ceremony, it came to light that no booking for the wedding had been made. McArdle's would-be in-laws were already suspicious about him. And this was before the couple had tied the knot. The bride's sister was overheard telling McArdle in fine Liverpudlian grammar: "You probably done the bomb scare yourself."

It didn't take long for police to trace the call and the hapless wannabe groom was arrested, confessing to his "embarrassment and shame."

McArdle has just been sentenced to a year in jail. Apparently he's still with his fiancee, but the story did not allude to any future wedding plans.