Officials in an Italian town are selling lottery tickets - for places in the local cemetery.

Marano, near Naples, has run out of room at the town's cemetery and had to create a new "emergency" graveyard containing 48 plots. But they feared people would try to bribe officials to get plots and decided to stage a lottery instead.

The public lottery means families winning places will be guaranteed a grave plot.Work on a new cemetery in the town with more than 1,000 grave plots is just starting but in the meantime the dead were stacking up at local morgues.

Cemetery caretaker Mario Granata said: "We had no choice but to take emergency measures. The situation was getting out of control."

Knowing my luck I'll end up in the wheelie bin...

It would have to be the week when the jackpot was shared...

The original was here.