Read all about it - Queen Mother extradited to Spain!

As a last resort, the US will fly low over Serbian ski resorts and knock down their cable-cars

HOW WELL do you follow the news? Ten minutes after you have switched off the latest news, how much of it can you remember? Do you know where Kosovo is? Is your memory for trivial news voracious? If you went on the News Quiz, would you get the questions right, or would you say, like Alan Coren, "Well, Simon, I would rather you had asked me about the story about the two kippers and the policewoman..."?

Now is the chance to test yourself! Here are seven news stories from the last 10 days. Which of them are true and which are false? On your marks, get set...

1 A man in Alnwick, Northumbria, was prosecuted on the very unusual charge of conspiring to entice others to trespass. He was engaged in a vendetta against his next-door neighbour, and devised the unusual plan of annoying him by tying a set of inflated party balloons to his neighbour's gate. Everyone assumed that there was a party going on and enough gatecrashers arrived to make the man's life a nuisance all afternoon. By the time the man discovered the balloons on his gate outside, he had had to deal with over 30 uninvited guests. He therefore sued his neighbour on the rare charge of enticing to trespass.

2 The lighthouse at Beachy Head, which is being moved a short distance, is not being transported for safety reasons or to avoid erosion. The fact is that English Heritage have recently hired a feng shui consultant who has decided that the lighthouse was built in a most unpropitious situation, facing slightly the wrong way, and inviting evil influences. The lighthouse is not being taken to another site - it is in fact being revolved a little so that it faces a luckier direction.

3 Police were called to a hot snacks'n'sandwich bar in a lay-by in Lincolnshire where more than 60 cars were parked and at least 100 people were queuing for service. A little unrest had broken out, with people throwing water over each other. Police were curious to know why there was such a demand for food and drink. It turned out that the sandwich bar had recently been awarded a licence for celebrating marriages, and one of their regular lorry drivers had elected to get married there. The long queue was the wedding reception and the unrest and horseplay with water were an attempt to sober up the best man in time for his speech.

4 The RUC in Northern Ireland has discovered an arms factory run by the IRA which was busy manufacturing arms that were not designed to be used. They were only going to be handed over for decommissioning purposes, so that the IRA could hang on to their real weapons.

5 Anxious to reclaim from the Queen Mother the pounds 4m she owes it, Coutts Bank has been having secret talks with the present owners of Barings Bank to see if they can use the same mechanism that Barings used with Nick Leeson. Their talks are being kept very hush-hush because Coutts does not want it to seem as if it is trying to get the Queen Mum sent to prison. On the other hand, it would dearly love to get the money back, because, as one bank executive put it, RI can think of several countries in Latin America that are a better credit risk than the old bat. They are also looking at the possibility of getting the Queen Mother extradited to Spain.

6 Crop circles seldom make news during the winter, for the simple reason that crops are not generally grown during the winter and it is hard to make circles in non-existent wheat. However, cerealogists were called out in great excitement last week to a field in the middle of Wiltshire where astounding symmetrical patterns had been spotted in the bare earth, a series of mostly straight, but sometimes wavy lines in very tight parallels.

While they were examining the phenomenon, the farmer who owned the field came past that way and informed them somewhat curtly that a) they were trespassing, and b) the patterns were due to the fact that he had ploughed the field the day before. The cerealogists refused to believe him and now think that the patterns were made by out-of-season crop circle aliens on a day outing.

7 The Americans have a secret plan up their sleeve to deal with the Serbians. As a last resort, they are going to fly low over Serbian ski resorts and knock down all their cable-cars.

Did you spot that, in fact, all of the stories were fake, except for the one that was about Gwyneth Paltrow and the seven red-headed dwarfs? Well done!