Tragedies are, of course, tragic, but sometimes funny things happen too. According to the Sri Lanka Daily News (as reported in this week’s Private Eye), one package of aid contained, er, marital aids:

“We had a staff of eight on the ship travelling to Sri Lanka,” Elli Xenou told journalists in Colombo, “with six hundred tons of aid to help victims of the Boxing Day tsunami. And because it had been collected by the Greek Orthodox Church, we hadn’t thought it necessary to check what was inside the boxes. So when we arrived at the harbour and started opening the containers, we were shocked and angered by what we found. Because instead of the blankets, tents and practical clothing we’d expected and needed, many of the boxes contained carnival wigs, rubber thongs, false plastic breasts, vibrators, erotic lingerie and bondage gear.”

…Dimitris Fourlemadis (director of the Orthodox Church’s charity) tried to play down the affair. “It’s true that some boxes may have contained suspect clothing, but the figure was very small. Even if there were two, or ten, or maybe a couple of hundred boxes with thongs and wigs in them, that’s still a very small number. Hardly worth mentioning really.”