Stamp of disapproval

THE family in ration-hit Britain looked forward to food parcels from their American uncle. Children Ron and Kitty particularly loved the tins of custard he sent. So when a parcel arrived in 1942, their mother mixed the powder with boiling water. It tasted disgusting. No wonder, the tin contained, not custard powder, but the ashes of Uncle Bill.

He wanted to be buried in this country, unfortunately the letter informing of his wishes got delayed in the post. So poor Ron and Kitty were served a hot bowl of Uncle Bill's cremated corpse.

I do hope you're not eating while reading this. Would it help if I tell you this didn't really happen? It's an Urban Legend, a modern folk story of mystery, fear and humour. This one is a worldwide tall story that's turned up in various versions around the globe.

It was one of three Urban Legends related in a programme of the same name, a cheesy low budget half-hour that's enjoyable in a B-movie kind of way.

We are invited to guess which of three really happened. Besides Uncle Bill's Custard, there was a woman who slept in a hotel room with a rotting corpse and the worker who died at his desk, his death going unnoticed for days.

The true story is related by Lynn Nakamura, who was aware of a funny smell in the hotel room in Pasadena she was sharing with her brother.

They didn't ask to change rooms, only to learn several weeks later than the dead body of a woman had been concealed in the base of the bed. The same bed in which Lynn had slept, inches away from the rotting corpse. She'll never complain again when they forget to leave clean towels in her hotel room.

Boss Elliot Wachiaski was less than sympathic about employee George who had a heart attack and died while on the phone at his office desk. He stayed that way for several days. Fellow workers didn't notice he was dead, that he was quite literally a stiff.

Gavin Stamp's Orient Express found the writer and historian in Transylvania, home of Dracula. He can be very grumpy. "You can't swing a crucifix without hitting another hideous bloodsucking souvenir," he moans, supping his Dracula soup and drinking his Vampire wine (red, of course).

It's not so much the exploitation that niggles him as Romania choosing to celebrate such an unspeakable man as Vlad the Impaler, who enjoyed impaling Muslim Turkish prisoners on stakes like human kebabs.

"I do not find it sympathetic a place should base its tourist industry on celebrating a vile, mass murdering sadist," he says, clearly not a man to beat about the bush.

He's similarly harsh in his criticism of Bucharest. When he last visited the city, he'd never seen such poverty. As soon as he gets off the train, he sees how much the place has changed. Once eerily empty, the roads are now clogged with cars and buildings plastered with advertising hoardings. "I'm not sure I like it, some places look better depressed," he says.

He reserves most of his architectural criticism for former President Ceausesau, whose Palace of the People, now the Parliament building, dwarfs everything around it "like a malevolent giant".

Stamp wants to show viewers inside the building, but the authorities demand 5,000 euros an hour filming fee. "I've been here before, it's just not worth it," he says. "All you see is room after room lined with marble, all equally vulgar, tasteless and boring."

Doesn't like it, does he? A view reinforced when he saw Ceausesau not only constructed the second biggest building in the world but, more importantly, the worst building in the world.

Now he feels the city's been ruined by unbridled capitalism. He's last seen fleeing a restaurant as musicians, including a dreaded accordionist, head for his table. "I decide to make a break for it while I still can," he says.

And when you gotta go, you gotta go.