Pothole in one

We all complain about potholes, but not even Rod Stewart can draw attention to them like this young man has. JOHN EVANS meets him

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Fancy having road chippings with your Weetabix? Eating the popular cereal from a pothole is the latest stunt by local campaigner Ben Thornbury designed to highlight the problem of potholes on the roads in and around his home town of Malmesbury, Wiltshire.

Two years ago, when he created a crazy golf course from potholes on the town's high street and invited locals to play, three weeks later the council resurfaced the entire road. Coincidence or not, buoyed by that success Thornbury followed it up with more pothole golf, this time on St Mary's Street, elsewhere in the town. Last year, he moved onto pothole fishing on a road close to Malmesbury's famous abbey. A short while later, the council patched up the potholes - but by early 2025 they had reappeared, so the council resurfaced it. In July, Thornbury came up with the idea of eating Weetabix from a pothole, a stunt he performed in Somerford Keynes, a nearby village. Most recently, in August, he painted some of Malmesbury's potholes with St George's Crosses.

Reflecting on his stunts, Thornbury says: “I won't do the Weetabix one again - milk and gravel isn’t very nice - and the council has warned that painting potholes is vandalism and won't help bring repairs forward. But pothole golf was great fun and I think made a difference. People queued to have a go and drivers tooted their car horns in support. A local councillor told me he believed the stunts encouraged Wiltshire Council to resurface the roads.”