mrph | Feckin' stupid feckin' rumour-mongering...

Now doing the rounds on various Midlands mailing lists:

---start tripe---
Hi everyone!

Anyone that knows me well will know that I don't believe in much. I don't believe in ghosts or all that, and if I get one of those "Pass this email on to 50 million people and you will be rich, if you don't you will die etc etc" emails, I just delete them.

I want you all to pass this email on to as many people as you know, its not a chain email, but pass it on all the same.

Right then, I got home from work last night and went round to my best mates. The first words his mum said to me even before she
said hello was "don't go into Birmingham on October 6th".

She explained to me that a woman from her work was in Birmingham on saturday afternoon, and she was in one of those cash and carry warehouses where you can buy cheap stuff, and anyway, there was an indian / asian looking man in front of her who was struggling to get enough money together to pay for everything in his basket, so she gave him a pound coin so he could pay the 68p or whatever he owed.

When she left the shop he was waiting for her outside. He asked her for her name and address and said that he would give her the money back, but she told him not to worry about it. He then said "Ok, you have done me a good turn today so I shall do you one back, do not come into Birmingham town centre on october the 6th".

She didn't take much notice of him, but like me, the more she thought about it, the more she worried, so she went to the police.

They took her very seriously and showed her mug shots of known islamic supporters and members of extreme groups in Birmingham, and she saw the man in the book of mugshots.

So, i'm just warning you, if you were going to go to Brum Town Centre on the 6th of October, then I wouldn't.

I wasn't going to send this because I didn't want to worry people / look stupid when nothing happened on Oct 6th, but I thought that> if I didn't say anything and something happened then I would never forgive myself, so its worth the risk of looking a bit daft. Also, the 6th of October is the England / Greece game, when there are likely to be a lot of people in town's pubs n bars watching it, so if they wanted to do something nasty, it would be a good time.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might go into Birmingham Town Centre on the 6th of October. If you don't pass this email on, you will not get bad luck, and if you pass it on to more than 5 people you won't get good luck, but you might stop someone from getting caught up in whatever supposed to be going on on October the 6th.

This is not a chain e-mail.
---end tripe---

A bit too local for Snopes to care, but still has all the hallmarks of a delberate hoax. I wonder if anything similar is doing the rounds in London or elsewhere?