LIKE many men before they walk up the aisle, bridegroom-to-be Dave Atkinson was tempted by the face of a beautiful woman. But this was no ordinary face, he pleads by way of mitigation.
The stag night was going well, he remembers of the fateful weekend in October when he 'did the deed'. He had gathered with friends to sample Truro's finest ales before his nuptials.
But within a few hours he would see the face of a woman who would change his life. In the Old Ale House pub, his eyes were transfixed by the face of Liza Minnelli, who looked out at him from the eye-catching design on the shirt of a stranger.
Giving way to temptation, Dave convinced the stranger to swap shirts. "I had to have it," he admitted.
"Being slightly inebriated I was confident enough to ask the gentleman wearing it whether or not he would consider a swap for my shirt (and a nice shirt it was) kindly he agreed and we did the deed," he admitted.
But his infatuation was not set to last, it was agreed that the swap would only be a loan and the two arranged to meet up to swap back.
But the stag night in Truro turned to despair when Dave woke the next morning without the shirt – which he went on to discover was one-of-a-kind. Instead he wore a black Animal T-shirt of unknown provenance.
He confessed all to his fiancée – but despite attempts to make amends, Dave was lost. "At some point in my drunkenness I must have re-swapped my amazing swapped shirt with someone else – this may have happened several times," he said.
As a last resort he turned to social networking, launching his Help Find This Shirt! campaign on Facebook – generating thousands of hits – and eventually a new picture popped up: a stranger wearing the enigmatic shirt.
The ending of the story was a happy one: the shirt and its owner were reunited.
The moral of the tale? Don't lose the shirt off your back.
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