I saw mummy hit Santa Claus


"LONDON: Angry parents have beaten up Santa and three of his elves after taking their children to visit a "rip-off" Christmas grotto in England.

Visitors who forked out £30 ($69) a ticket to enter the grotto were promised a Christmas wonderland where "dreams really do come true".

However disappointed families have spoken of a "glorified car boot sale" with a Nativity scene painted on a billboard, a broken ice-skating rink and huskies tied up outside their kennels in a muddy field.

The park has now been renamed "Winter blunderland" and Britain's consumer watchdog has received 1300 complaints.

Former gate worker Adrian Wood said parents became angry when Santa refused to allow children to sit on his knee and charged an extra £10 for a picture.

"The final straw for one dad came when after four hours he was told he would have to join another queue for his child to get a present - so he marched up and punched Santa on the chin," Mr Wood told The Sun.

"The park was more like a war zone. How there weren't riots I've no idea."

Emma Craven, who worked as an elf, was slapped in the face by one woman who was fed up with the long wait for her children to see Santa. "The woman was screaming, 'Look what you've done to my kids'," she told the newspaper. "Then she slapped me around the face. It stung like hell as it was freezing."

It was claimed one child had to be comforted after finding a Santa smoking a cigarette outside his grotto.

Ivan Hancock, from Dorset County Council's trading standards department, said: "I've never known anything spark so many complaints in my 20 years of working with three different authorities. We have had 1300 people contact us. I've heard of someone spending £3000 on tickets and terrible stories of real human misery."

A park spokesman blamed "a few groups of professional troublemakers" for problems.
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Harding's the name, Dick Harding. I'm known for a lot of things. Mostly, I'm known for trouble. That's my trade. It's what I do. I make trouble. I'm a pro. Pros know how to do it right. If you really want some trouble, you'll get better quality if you call on a pro--believe me, I know. Ya wouldn't believe the times I had to be called in to handle a trouble-making situation where some amateur had offered to do the job cheap, and ended up creating nothing but minor irritation or some stupid transient upset between a couple of fringe bit players. That's not real troubl;e. You want REAL trouble, you call a pro. Like me. The names Harding, like I said. Dick Harding. You want trouble, give me a call.


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