You couldn't make this one up...

Mar 10 2010 By Jon Walker

TOP columnist Richard Littlejohn has been reminiscing about his days on the Birmingham Mail.

The writer and TV pundit smiles on learning the city council advised families to stock a hurricane survival kit, saying: “We’d have killed for a headline like that”.

But he seems to have lost touch with the city a little since working here in the 1970s – as he mocks the authority for claiming that the city was hit by a tornado.

As the residents of Balsall Heath know all too well, they were indeed hit by a tornado in 2005.

It’s one of those stories you couldn’t make up, but which happens to be true.