A headline from the Guardian reads: Rubber banned: Keep Britain Tidy wages war on Royal Mail elastic bands (read article here).

The exploitation of homophones for play-on-word newspaper headlines is common practice. In this case, one of the words is a regular -ed past participle (banned) and that makes it extra clever. Here are other examples of similar headlines that you may (but probably won’t) remember:

Guessed room
“I always had a feeling that there was a hidden secret chamber somewhere in our house,” claims woman.

Band substances
A report of rising drug use among musicians

Board out their minds
A report that young people just aren’t enjoying chess these days

Passed perfect
Football pundit Andy Gray’s 10 all-time greatest midfielders

Mist calls
London sees the worst recorded fog in history. Disoriented pedestrians are forced to make use of GPS features in mobile phones to find their way home.

Bard!
Shakespeare is denied entry into a local pub due to alleged bad behaviour.

Toad away
A story about a giant frog that had to be removed by the council after it refused to move itself from a busy street.

Can anyone think of any more?