As reporters we are often asked at this time of year to bank up as many stories as we can to be used during the “silly season.”

With so many organisations and people on holiday, it is harder to find news, leading to many bizarre and often ridiculous stories emerging in the media.

It is this time of year when sightings of the Loch Ness Monster creep into the news - recently it was reported that the creature’s remains had been washed up on the shore. It was in fact, a TV stunt.

Sightings of spaceships and big cats - usually in the West Country - are given far more column inches than they deserve. The legendary Beast of Bodmin usually makes an appearance, and there have over the years been a number of big cat sightings in Yorkshire. If only someone would supply a photograph that wasn’t taken so far away, and is so blurred, you can barely make out the beast.

I’m not mocking such stories, just saying it is very easy to make a mistake. I have done it myself.

Last year, driving near Boroughbridge, I suddenly yelled at my husband to look at “that massive cat, like a puma” prowling among bramble bushes on a steep embankment.

I was so convinced that it was a big cat that I turned around to go back, handing my husband the camera to capture the animal on film. I felt very silly indeed when it turned out to be a large domestic cat.

York Press:

Silly season: No, that wasn't Elvis you just saw at the fish counter...

The term ‘silly season’ was coined in 1894 and is sometimes also defined as the part of the year when Parliament is not sitting - although if you listen to Today in Parliament the exchanges are often worse than silly when they are sitting.

Schools are also a big source of news which is missing during the long break.

In North America, the period is known as the slow news season, or dog days of summer, but the outbreak of wild or tall stories is a very British phenomenon.

So, if you think you’ve see a UFO, spotted Elvis at the fish counter in your local supermarket or come across an image of Bob Geldof on an Eccles cake, and you would like the local paper to sit up and take notice, this is the time to pick up the phone.

Of course, on the internet, every day is silly season.

A giant spider eating someone’s foot, a dog that dances the can-can, a yeti photobombing a party of climbers - they’re all out there vying for our attention. There are so many ridiculous and wacky tales on the web that we now take them with a pinch of salt. But, among all the doom and gloom of the mainstream Press, they still grab your attention. It’s all good fun, and I look forward to this silly season’s crop of outlandish stories that will, I am sure, put smiles on our faces.