Joe Root bidding to become that one cricketer you’ve heard of

ENGLAND batsman Joe Root is making an audacious bid to be recognisable to normal people.

The Yorkshire player, who followed a century earlier this week with an excellent catch today, hopes to become the one cricketer in every generation who Britons have heard of.

He said: “An unbroken line of cricket players vaguely familiar when they appear in Shredded Wheat commercials stretches behind me.

“From WG Grace to Geoffrey Boycott to Ian Botham, the public is willing to remember the name of a cricketer every ten years, and I believe it is my time.

“And once I am known I will never be forgotten, even though all of my achievements are. Just ask Freddie Flintoff.”

Housewife Francesca Johnson said: “Joe Root. Got you. I’ll remember that for Strictly in eight years time.”

We charge diesel drivers extra because they’re dirty bastards, say oil companies

DIESEL costs more than petrol as punishment for diesel motorists’ uncleanliness, oil companies have admitted.

The wholesale diesel price is now 2p a litre below petrol, but diesel still costs 4p more at the pumps because drivers of diesel cars ‘are animals who need a lesson’, said a Shell spokesman.

He continued: “The lorries overtaking each other at 0.00047mph? Diesel. The black cab that just cut you up at the lights? Diesel.

“That Nissan Qashqai deafening you with its chugging engine while you choke on its black, black exhaust fumes? You got it in one, my friend.

“They keep their cars like the bin outside a Greggs, they keep their houses like the specialist magazine section at Lymm Truck Stop, and they never wash, preferring to rub their filthy, sooty discharge into their oily skin.

“Farmers obviously get to do that with untaxed red diesel.”

Bill McKay, who drives a petrol-engine Ford S-Max, said: “So they’re different from me, and wrong, and so need to be charged more because of that?

“I can go along with that, certainly.”