Yorkshire Bitter

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of The Darwin Awards but it’s a website dedicated to stupid people who selflessly remove themselves from the human gene pool by dying in particularly stupid ways, e.g. juggling with live hand grenades.

Selby now has its very own candidate, according to the York Press, which reports on a man who suffered a 33,000-volt electric shock when he tried to steal copper wiring from a substation:

Steven Smith, 43, of Cockret Court, Selby, was spotted earlier this month in the town’s Bawtry Road by members of the public, who said he had severe burns. Mr Smith, who police said had tried to take the wiring from a local electricity substation, was taken to Pinderfields Hospital, in Wakefield.

He died on Monday from the burns he suffered during the shock.

PC Simon Bradley, of Selby Police Station, warned people not to attempt to steal copper wiring, and said copper thefts were currently a big problem because of its present high value: “But people are taking big risks to steal it. Substations and places of high voltage have huge amounts of copper and resalable material, but we’re warning people not to attempt to steal it, as it’s very likely to harm them.”

Now I appreciate Mr Smith may have been someone’s dad, brother, son etc, so I do have sympathy for any of his family or friends who may read this. But he did bring it on himself and really should have thought about his loved ones before doing such a stupidly dangerous thing.

Still, he’s in exalted company. Other Darwin Award candidates have:

• jumped out of a plane to film skydivers without wearing a parachute;
• tried to get enough light to look down the barrel of a loaded gun using a cigarette lighter^;
• used a lighter to illuminate a fuel tank to make sure it contains nothing flammable;
• attempted to play Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol that automatically reloads the next round into the chamber and
• crashed through a window and fell to their death in trying to demonstrate that the window is unbreakable.