ONE of three films shown last week at the Learning For Real screening at the Salisbury Arts Centre was a documentary about a science teacher in Somerset whose greenhouse club for pupils turned into a world-renowned specialist orchid conservation scheme.

It's a great story about a great teacher whose passion for plants has inspired his pupils to achieve awards universities and national horticulture bodies would be proud of and keeps orchid enthusiasts in good supply.

Days later I found my mind straying from these worthy aspects of a specialist interest and speculating on all the weird and wonderful hobbies out there.

Thanks to the internet, you don't have to look far to open a Pandora's box of peculiar pastimes.

Take for example Chuck Lamb, widely known as the 'dead body guy'. His idea of fun is staging scenes of his own mock death – splayed on a car bonnet or collapsed on a kitchen counter, his hand on a fork and that fork stuck in the toaster.

He sets up and records these scenes on film or by photograph so others can share the fun, which clearly they do.

He had 32 million hits when he started this hobby in 2005 and is still going strong. The tagline on his website is 'Help me live my dream - let me play dead'.

Another notable seeker of the limelight, who by contrast prefers to appear very much alive, is Paul Yarrow.

Yarrow has earned the title as the UK's top 'newsraider' which basically means this guy does his utmost to happen to be the casual bystander whenever there's a reporter on the scene for a television news story.

Don't ask me how the guy actually makes a living.

And then there's extreme ironing, and this one is worth looking up. Photographs of swarthy-looking men on rock faces, in whitewater – in mid-air even – wielding an iron.

Again, there are lots of questions for the pedantic, not least, where are the power points in these remote locations? Perhaps there are battery-operated irons purpose-built for the demands of extreme ironers.

Thankfully extreme ironers also do irony.

On their 'About Us' page they ask the question: 'What do you do when you want to go out with your friends and have a good time, but have a truck-load of ironing to do at home? Combine them!' and wax lyrical about the joys of mixing adrenaline-fuelled adventure with those of a well-pressed shirt.