Plimmer and King, who first explored this territory in a series of shows for BBC Radio 4, scramble to fill their allotted pages. They spend far too much time with Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor and his training programs designed to turn miserable, unlucky skeptics into lucky winners.
They stuff the book with several anecdotes that sound too good to be true, and even more that are too true to be good. George Frideric Handel and Jimi Hendrix lived at adjacent addresses in London. Nine women at a British supermarket, all working at the same cash register, became pregnant in a 10-month period. A man trying to console his next-door neighbor after a painful breakup put the former couple's favorite record on the turntable. Ooooh.
On the other hand, it is deeply satisfying to know that a Canadian farmer named McDonald has the postal code EIEIO, and there is at least half a screenplay in the tale of a bank robber who, hitting the same bank and the same teller a second time, escaped because the bank guard and the managers were in a back office reviewing videotapes of the first robbery.
The award for the most painful coincidence in recorded history must go to the poet Simon Armitage, who chanced upon a used copy of a book of his poems in a trash bin outside a thrift store. On the title page was the following inscription, in his own handwriting: "To Mum and Dad."
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