I thought they only made notebooks there

The university was forced to pay thousands of pounds for two professional steeplejacks to remove the Father Christmas hats.

It would have been cheaper to hire this guy:

Huh? This story is already a week old:

Santa hats appear on all four spires of Kings College Chapel (new window)

/Good stunt though.

Is a Father Christmas hat different from a Santa hat? And if so, how different?

ecossais: Huh? This story is already a week old:

Santa hats appear on all four spires of Kings College Chapel (new window)

/Good stunt though.

The response from the college is to be expected, yeah? I am glad they managed to stop laughing long enough to issue their strongly worded statement.

+1 on the headlines subby.

It has taken two men half a day to rescue each hat using specialist ladders.

Ok, let's break this down to where the dumbness lies.

First, they're HATS. They don't need rescued.
Second, TWO guys + Half day vs. a week of publicity + wind knocking them off eventually.

I thought this place was a SCHOOL for college kids.
Apparently only the "gifted" are in charge.

Quality prank, Lads.

Snarcoleptic_Hoosier: They are free and fairly sober with so many toys to build. The machines are kind of tricky, probably someone will be killed.


/Not obscure

And now I have that stuck in my head.

Was any scaling even required? I'm sure a bunch of engineering students could whip up an R/C helicopter contraption to drop the hats on top of the spires without any risk to life and limb. Could've done the same to remove the hats without have to hire 'steeplejacks'. Oh well... maybe it's not really a great prank unless there's risk of death involved.

wengkius
"Was any scaling even required? I'm sure a bunch of engineering students could whip up an R/C helicopter contraption"

Even a real helicopter wouldn't have cost must and would have taken about 15 minutes.

This all presupposes they needed to remove the hats. I would think that people seeing the hats on TV would think it funny.

Surprised the local police didn't show up at the Student Union/Mountaineering Club to express the following:
"We can't prove you did it. But if you go back up and take them down, we'll say no more about it."

/Not saying this ever happened
//nor where
///and definitely not the Scott Monument in Edinburgh
//nor when last century it might have happened

Great pic of the "crime scene". Those hats really stand out.

Sudlow: wengkius
"Was any scaling even required? I'm sure a bunch of engineering students could whip up an R/C helicopter contraption"

Even a real helicopter wouldn't have cost must and would have taken about 15 minutes.

This all presupposes they needed to remove the hats. I would think that people seeing the hats on TV would think it funny.

This happened last year at another college in Cambridge as well. In that incident, the fire brigade were called in to remove the offending hat. I think they must be afraid of getting sued in case the hat gets blown off by the wind and falls down on someone. One can imagine the injuries that would cause.

These pussies have nothing on MIT.

But that's to be expected from the inferior students at the "other" Cambridge.

Yay Cambridge! Or should I say, "Hip hip Hoorah Cambridge!" I went to Kings College Choir School* so I'm getting a kick out of this.
Anyway, waste of money paying those guys to take the hats down. If that hadn't occurred to them it means Kings College has too much money I guess.

/*No, I wasn't a chorister.