The London Review of Books published a compendium of the weirdest and funniest advertisements from the eccentric readers who write to it’s personal column in seek of love, sex, or friendship with like minded people. You know- serial embezzlers, beardy physicists known as Naughty Lola, or self-harming flautists.

The book is called “They call me Naughty Lola”, and it proves that the English are not all stiff-upper lip with this strange collection.

Here’s an example of what you might find in Naughty Lola:

“Woman, 32, needful of the finer things in life seeks stinking rich bloke, 80-100,” one ad says. “Must be willing to fibrillate his ventricles when he becomes tiresome or bankrupt or both. Also interesting thirtysomethings for illicit, immoral affair to be conducted concurrently with the above.”

Or maybe this guy’s more your style? “Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53 seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.”

The column began in 1988 and was meant to be a genuine lonely hearts column, however after his first submission arrived – “67-year-old disaffiliated flaneur picking my toothless way through the urban sprawl, self-destructive, sliding towards pathos, jacked up on Viagra and on the lookout for a contortionist who plays the trumpet.” David Rose, the columns creator, decided to create his column as a a notice board for the strange, hilarious and downright bizarre.

Surprisingly entries such as – “You were reading the BBC in-house magazine on the Jubilee Line (12 November). I was coughing hot tea through my nostrils. Surely you can’t have forgotten? Write now to smitten, weak-kneed, severely burnt, bumbling F (32, but normally I look younger). I’ll be quite a catch when my top lip has healed. And this brace isn’t forever.” have often resulted in marriages, children, at least one divorce and countless liaisons.