It’s learned that the medical condition called “cello scrotum” has been declared a hoax.
A top doctor has owned-up to her part in fooling a leading medical journal after inventing the condition in the 1970’s.
Fortunately for Elaine Murphy – now Baroness Murphy – no one faces the sack for failing to spot the implausibility of the ailment, which requires the cello to be played in a somewhat uncompromising position.
She dreamt up the painful complaint in 1974, sending a report to established paper, the British Medical Journal. The hoax resurfaced in the 2008 Christmas edition, after which she then came clean and pointed out the balls-up.
Hopefully we’ll soon learn that the “credit crunch” and the “recession” are both hoaxes too.
Or, better still, that the concept of debt is just a way of fooling us into thinking that we’re poor – when in actual fact we’re all millionaires.
Oh, well. We can dream.