AND FINALLY

“We walked in the cold air, freezing breath on a window pane. Lying and waiting, a man in the dark in a picture frame.” The lyrics from seminal 80s new wave anthem ‘Vienna’ have little to do with this story, but there is a man from Vienna in it and he appears in a picture frame – on his driving licence – wearing a sieve on his head; a piece of headwear even the suave Midge Urgh couldn’t make look cool.

Niko Alm did it in protest at Austrian laws which state that only the religiously committed can wear head coverings in official photos. So he declared himself a ‘pastafarian’ and fought for three years to win the right to sport a colander in worship of the durum wheat foodstuff. Authorities showed a lazy racist stereotyped lack of a sense of humour about the whole thing, but had to eventually relent as the regulations say that as long as the facial area is uncovered, anything goes.  It must have been a strain, but at least Niko eventually proved that the penne is mightier than the word.