/ 18 March 2009

It don’t stink nice, it’s not all right

The answer, it seems, is blowin’ in the wind. Bob Dylan’s neighbours in the celebrity enclave of Malibu first noticed a mysterious stench last year but couldn’t work out where it was coming from.

“I’d go into the front yard and get nauseous,” Cindy Emminger told the Los Angeles Times. Then she spotted a portable toilet used by Dylan’s security guards. “They had moved the porta-potty directly in front of my front door,” she said.

After failing to get a response from Dylan to her requests to move the toilet, Emminger tried using fans to blow the foetid air back at him. The Pacific Ocean breezes, however, proved stronger.

“It’s worse when it’s misty outside at night,” said Emminger. “We turn on the five fans, but it still gets inside our house. We’re not even using the upstairs now. We sleep downstairs.”

Malibu city council officials are investigating, although an attempt by a health and safety officer to inspect the toilet was rebuffed by security guards. “I drove by one time and couldn’t locate the porta-potty or smell anything,” said city manager Jim Thorsen. – guardian.co.uk