Confirming Kate Fox’s anthropological observation that the creative love of wordplay evinced by our tabloid headlines is one of rather few things of which the British can be proud, here’s one spotted today (about a table-tennis player involved in an altercation, you understand):

Ping-Pong Ding-Dong

Actually, a quick search online shows that this has quite a history. Once freed of the petty constraint of describing an actual event (which has seldom held the tabloids back), it can even expand into the headline reporting a fight with a giant ape at a table-tennis club karaoke night:

King Kong Ping-Pong Sing-Song Ding-Dong

For more on King Kong, see here; and for “Xi sells seashells by the seashore”, here. For a more sonorous ding-dong, click here. A related headline opens my haiku on Morris dancing; note also my roundup of wacky headlines.