The announcement in The Times of London gave the world the wonderful news that Kate Pong had given birth to quintuplets.
Richard Littlejohn of The Daily Mail noticed the babies' unusual names: Barack, Bobbi, Beyonce, Earl and Tyra. This led him to speculate on Ms. Pong's marital status, since there was no mention of a Mr. Pong in the announcement.
We rang The Times advertising department and they assured us it was genuine.There's no mention of a Mr Pong, or any father's name for that matter.
If true, which I still doubt, somewhere out there in Shropshire is a single mother called Kate Pong with quins, variously named after an American pop singer, a model and the U.S. President.
You couldn't make it up.
Ah, but there is more to the story.
If he had done a little research, he would have solved the mystery. Kate Pong is a Labrador, a bitch who is quite well known because owner Fiona Wallace and her partner Julie Templeton have a popular website about their show jumping ponies. Wallace explained:
"And Kate has become quite famous in the horse world because we always write about her antics in the news pages that are uploaded to our website."We have a lot of friends in the business all over the country and lots of people read about her on the website.
They keep logging on and it's just snowballed from there.
"So many people were asking about her and the pups that we decided to put it in the Times so everyone around the country would know."
Now the BBC has the straight dope for anyone still wondering. Meanwhile, Wallace and Templeton are having fun with the story and trying to keep the dog at the top of Google search for "Kate Pong".

