Grandmother Ruth Flowers played her set at Anaheim’s Electro Festival and praised her youthful followers, she said, “They want to touch me and kiss me and they throw me gifts, bracelets off their arm.

“I’ve had two red roses thrown at me by young men and I think that’s rather lovely for an old biddy like me.”

Flowers only became interested in becoming a disc jockey in 2005 when she attended a London nightclub for her grandson’s birthday.

In a previous interview with The Telegraph, Flowers described her first reaction to the nightclub, “It was frightfully noisy of course, and there were all these lights flashing.

“But what I realised was that these young people were just having so much fun.

“So I said to my grandson, ‘You know what darling, I could arrange things like this, for the local kids.’ And he said he thought that would be very cool.”

Five years on and Mamy Rock is quickly establishing herself as a top DJ, with a stream of bookings in both Europe and now the US. While in Los Angeles Flowers worked in the recording studio on her next single “69″, a nod to her age.

SWIEBODZIN, Poland (Reuters Life!) – A statue of Jesus Christ that its builders say will be the largest in the world is fast rising from a Polish cabbage field and local officials hope it will become a beacon for tourists.

The builders expect to attach the arms, head and crown to the robed torso in coming days, weather and cranes permitting, completing a project conceived by local Catholic priest Sylwester Zawadzki and paid for by private donations.

Standing on an artificial mound, the plaster and fibre glass statue will stand some 52 metres (57 yards) when completed, taller than the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms that gazes over Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Polish officials say.

The actual statue will measure 33 metres — Zawadzki has said this reflects the fact that Jesus died at 33, according to Christian tradition — and weigh 440 tonnes.

“I’m happy because this project will bring publicity to our town, not only in Poland but also from the global media. Other countries are showing a lot of interest,” said Dariusz Bekisz, mayor of Swiebodzin, a town of about 21,000 people in western Poland some 100 km (60 miles) from the German border.

“More people will visit Swiebodzin and leave their money. Some will come for spiritual reasons, others out of curiosity,” he said, adding no public money had been used in the project.

“The priest, Father Zawadzki, is a man of action who always, throughout his life, has built and created… In the future we’re going to have to think about bringing the carnival to Swiebodzin too, just as in Rio,” he joked.

SCEPTICISM

Zawadzki is avoiding media for the time-being and Polish church leaders could not immediately be reached for comment. But the editor of Poland’s Catholic Information Agency (KAI) sounded a sceptical note.

“Everybody has a right to do what they want. Swiebodzin’s Jesus project doesn’t touch my religious sensitivity. These kinds of monuments don’t have much to do with spirituality,” editor Tomasz Krolak said.

“People should think more about building within themselves rather than making big monuments.”

Local townspeople seemed bemused by the whole affair.

“Building Jesus is an interesting idea, but I’m afraid we can’t beat Rio. I don’t treat this 100 percent seriously,” said local resident Piotr Pinio.

Others thought the money could have been put to better use.

“There are far more important aims to which we could put the money — sick children, for example, orphanages, old people. Do we really have to build a big Jesus statue to make people believe,” said Mieczyslawa Hundert.

Poland remains one of the most religiously observant cou

Bernd Ottovordemgentschenfelde says he has trouble getting his name to fit on official forms Photo: ALAMY

The 45-year-old floor tiler from the Rhineland says he has trouble getting his name to fit on official forms, as well as the side of his van.

He often has to shorten his name for credit cards, while his wife Sylvia, 45, and daughter Nadine, 14, have both shortened their last name to Gentschenfelde.

“My father wanted to give me a second first name,” he said. “But my mother successfully stopped that!”

Judth Schwanke, a name expert from the University of Leipzig in Germany, confirmed he currently has the longest name on record, at 24 letters.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The eastern Dutch city of Nijmegen is taking 10 statues off the streets after some of its bronzes were stolen and most likely melted down to take advantage of the high price of the metal alloy.

Among the statues to be removed for safe-keeping is “Mariken van Nieumeghen” — or Mariken from Nijmegen — which refers to a local character in one of the Netherlands’ earliest books, written around the year 1500.

The city plans to protect the statues by implanting a GPS chip or may replace them with copies made from cheaper materials.

(Reporting by Marcel Michelson; Editing by Sara Webb)

Armed with only an ‘I’ as a clue, Caitlin Burke, a 26-year-old fashion journalist, guessed that the phrase “I’ve got a good feeling about this” lay behind the 26 remaining spaces.

Her gamble won her a holiday in the Caribbean worth $6,500 (£4,029) and stunned Pat Sajak, the veteran host of the US version of the programme.

Asked how she had known the mystery phrase, Miss Burke said: ” I saw that it was a small word, so [thought] ‘I’ve’.

“And I thought maybe ‘got a feeling about’, so I’ve got a hunch and I said ‘I’ve got a feeling about this’,” she said.

Sajak said sarcastically: “Oh, in that case it was easy!”

Footage of Miss Burke’s feat spread across the web on Monday. It was pointed out she was also helped by the previous contestant wrongly guessing the puzzle contained an ‘R’.

Miss Burke won a total of more than $53,000 (£32,850) on the programme. She said she planned to pay off her student loan, buy a Chanel handbag and start a business.