The other week a customer bought a tungsten carbide ring from us. We ordered in the "correct" size, phoned him to say it was in a few days later and he came to collect it.

It was actually slightly to small for him. But he pushed it on, and in a typical Preston lad way said "it'll be right."

We knew that you can't cut through tungsten, and sure enough, about a week later we received a call from the good doctors at Preston accident and emergency asking us how they could remove it from his now swollen finger; he had spent a few unsuccessful hours at the local fire station where the firemen had broken 2 £30 hack saw blades trying to help him to no avail.

We told them (we really did, twice) to snap it in a vice. The interesting thing about tungsten is that it is very brittle and will shatter under pressure. Anyway, they chose to ignore our advice, and with him screaming in pain by this point, pleading with them to just cut his finger off, they wheeled him down to theatre for what turned out to be 2 hours of successful surgery. (He kept his finger by the way.)

He came in to see us a week or so later, and in typical Preston lad style, was totally decent about the whole thing - laughing the whole incident off as a good story to tell. We of course ordered in a new, slightly larger one which - unbelievably - he's still happily wearing now. We, er, didn't charge him for this one, by the way!

Anyway, we thought we'd post something on Youtube for the next doctor who potentially wouldn't be prepared to believe us to refer to - and hopefully afford someone some much quicker relief: