Updated, 17.10

HOLD THE FRONT page: Crowd gather at bridge of small town to look at unidentified object in the river below.

The most read story on the Bridgwater Mercury today is not concerned with Libyan air strikes, a local crime wave or national debt. It is a news item entitled: “Crowd gather at town bridge”.

It seems the presence of a mystery object in the river flowing through the Somerset town of Bridgwater has left the town teetering on the brink of anarchy. The ‘incident’ has set the local press ablaze with speculation: what is the mystery object?

The news article is illustrated by a picture captioned “Crowd gather” (sic) which shows around 20 people lined along a single-arch bridge over the River Parrett, looking into the water below. A second picture with the article shows a light-coloured blob in the water. It is captioned: “Unidentified object/animal”.

The article quotes local Coral Pople:

I’ve been here for 45 minutes. Everyone was saying it was a turtle – but it looks more like a pig to me.

Local police officers also attended the scene, the paper reports.

The excitement has flooded – ahem – into the comments section of the Bridgwater Mercury’s website as Bridgwaterites remain divided over what the mystery object could be.

“There was a dead sheep in there the other day, maybe it’s that,” suggested one reader.

“No, that’s in Langport [12 miles away] now,” another retorted. “I saw it at the weekend. It was definitely dead. No breathing.”

A third reader suggested that the creature may have been a dolphin which had shed its skin in order to allow for closer sexual contact while in heat, “hence the strange colour.” The poor creature, that reader posited, had died during copulation.

While the social fabric of the town, population 35,000, threatens to be ravaged by the dispute, one Mercury reader appeared to be in the minority with his controversial remark:

I can’t believe this is news… is there that little going on round Bridgwater?