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Everyone has a remarkable story of a chance encounter, or unlikely coincidence. And, even though I know that they’re statistically likely, they still amaze me.

Coincidence, according to Wikipedia is, “the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection.”

Now I’ve just come back from a break in Somerset and amazingly bumped into someone I know in a service station on the M4.

The friend, former Top Gear presenter Jason Barlow as it happens, is currently making a C4 Dispatches programme about road pricing and was heading down to the West Country to interview someone for it.

Given that he rarely strays down the M4 and lives in Hertfordshire, and we were off on a one-time trip to Somerset, I find this a rather large coincidence. Of all the 60 million people in the UK, I was standing next to him in the queue to buy a coffee.

Obviously, a mathematician would give me a extremely logical explanation as to why it wasn’t that coincidental that we bumped into each other, but I still think it was pretty impressive. So ya boo sucks to logic!

Don’t normally comment about things quite so personal, but I am very ill and have a bad stomach. I can’t eat anything and feel like crap! Boohoo!

Yup, you have to read it twice, but a dog has genuinely shot a man in America.

You can imagine the sort of stick that James Harris is going to get when he gets out of hospital, can’t you?

It puts me in mind, though, of other people who have been inadvertently injured by animals.

If I remember correctly, William III was indirectly killed by a mole, when his horse stumbled on a molehill and our former King fell and broke his neck. Careless, eh?

Then there’s the old chestnut of Catherine the Great being killed while engaging in sexual relations with a horse, which is total hogswallop, but it makes a great story, doesn’t it?

And then there’s the statistic that more people are killed fishing than any other sport – they drown trying to land “the one that got away”.

But my final animal injury has to be the most famous (and fortunately it’s been committed to celluloid). None other than the late, great Richard Whiteley being mauled by a ferret. Watch and wince!