Teenager draws giant penis on parent’s rooftop to attract Google Earth attention

This is too hillarious to let go off, even for me who is not the biggest fan of seemingly mindless media drivel.

The house above stands in Hungerford, UK. The Guardian reported that a teenager called Rory McInnes painted a giant phallus on the roof of his parents’ £1million mansion in West Berkshire mansion, apparently after watching a program about Google Earth. The BBC said it was there for a whole year before his parents found out. Rory’s certainly become a celebrity, and even his dad took it with a dose of good humour. Rory, 18, is currently in Brazil on a gap year and apparently will have to clean up the drawing when he comes back. Good to see those parents not minding it in the meantime, although I’m not sure – Rory’s Brazil gig might already be over.

It is not the first time the stunt has been tried. In 2006 the Sun reported that pranksters drew a dick on the roof of the posh Yarm School at Stockton on Tees, Teesside that went ­unnoticed until it appeared on Google Earth; they also burnt another one into the grass next to the school. Similarly for the benefit of Google Earth, pupils drew a 6m penis in weedkiller on school playing fields in Southampton in 2007. In both cases remedial action (scrubbing and re-seeding) apparently was only semi-successful – at least for a while.

Also in th UK there’s the Cerne Abbas village, featuring a huge outline sculpted into the chalk hillside above the village representing a naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant; it seems to be a product of the 17th century. I’d like to hear more about the psycho-cultural significance of this UK obsession with publicly painting and carving dicks. In the meantime though I’m quite amused by the public reactions it causes.