A man was arrested after stealing author Jonathan Franzen's glasses from the writer and demanding a ransom of £100,000 ($158,808) at a book launch.
Well, it's good to have the ransom demand translated into US dollars for the benefit of American readers. One suspects motives of a not-quite-serious nature - the word prank springs to mind - but the BBC treats it all with a straight face:
Graeme Neill, news editor of trade magazine The Bookseller, was at the book launch when the glasses were snatched.
"It was frankly quite bizarre," he said. "Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work, this is the last thing anyone expected at his book launch."
Well quite. At the launch of a book by a less serious writer, perhaps...
Mr Neill said Franzen seemed "shocked" afterwards because it was "such an unexpected thing to happen".
He added: "It has been an increasingly bizarre week for him, what with last week and the printing errors, he's probably wondering 'what next?'"
Mr Neill said he thought two men had approached Franzen, pretending they worked for another publishing house.
He said one of them handed Franzen a ransom note and the other ran off and was apparently later found hiding beside a bush.
A police spokesperson said: "During this incident the suspect entered a body of water in Hyde Park.
They have special training, these police spokespersons. "Entered a body of water in Hyde Park? Are you saying, officer, that he jumped into the Serpentine?" "I'm sorry sir, but I'm not at liberty to divulge that information."
"As a matter of course, and in order to safeguard the wellbeing of the man, a helicopter was used to locate him."
GQ interviews the bloke who did it here: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2010-10/06/gq-books-jonathan-franzen-glasses-thief-interview
'We sat drinking excessive champagne for a while and talking to some of the guests there until I realised just how dull it all was. If you're going to gatecrash a party, the highlight of it surely can't consist of several predictable nervous speeches and vacuous conversations. So I decided to do something.'
Posted by: Jon Barnard | October 06, 2010 at 04:32 PM