Brawling philosophers in hotel rumpus shame

The opening celebrations for the fifty-seventh International Congress of Philosophy were marred by controversy and violence when the assembled experts disagreed about whether or not a single person waiting at the hotel reception constituted a "queue".

As the delegates were arriving at the conference venue — the £150-a-night Happy Rep Hotel near Andover — they spotted a lone man standing at the reception desk waiting for his bill. "The trouble began right there," said 66-year-old Douglas Featherleigh, Emeritus Professor of Semiotics at Leighton Buzzard. "I said: ‘Let’s join the queue,' but one of my fellow delgates, Richard Heinsmead, took exception and insisted it wouldn’t constitute a queue until after we had joined it."

Eye-witnesses report that the dispute soon became heated, with Professor Featherleigh referring to Heinsmead as a "slag". Hotel staff eventually intervened with dogs and nets to restore order, but not before several other academics had had waded into a scuffle which left Professor Heinsmead (41) needing two stitches to his nose.

Heinsmead was not immediately available for comment this morning. A representative from the Pensée Internationale, the governing body for philosophy, later issued an official clarification: "The man had rung the little bell on the counter. Therefore he was at the front of a line of one person waiting to be served and so constituted a queue."

Asked if this analysis was open to discussion, the spokesman angrily threatened to "fill in" our reporter and asked him if he "wanted some?" We declined the offer.