What do 'bathetic weasels,' 'gusseted hobbits' and 'zoroastrian chipmunks' have in common? Rather than being characters in some new work of science fiction, they are examples of a craze that has taken the internet by storm.
Take two obscure and unrelated words, type them into the google search bar and if the result is a solitary web page you have found a googlewhack.
Googlewhacking, the search for 'Result 1-1 of 1' on the internet's favourite search engine, has become a pastime for everyone from bored office workers to lexicographers and even Nasa scientists.
'It started among bloggers and from there spread through chatrooms, so that now there are people looking for googlewhacks all over the world. I think it's particularly popular with people in the UK. There's just something about it that attracts certain people,' says Gary Stock, whose website, googlewhack.com, has become the home for people to register their whacks and compare notes with other devotees.
One person who was certainly attracted is comedian Dave Gorman, who first heard of the phenomenon when a stranger contacted him. 'When somebody emailed me to tell me I was a googlewhack, I guessed they were being rude. I didn't have a clue what it was. I thought, 'what's a google?' And, 'what am I doing if I'm whacking it?' It was only when they emailed back that I worked out they were talking about a page on my site.
'When I realised that there were two words that only occurred together on my site in the entire internet, I felt quite excited. There's something quite special and quite beautiful about things that are so unique. It's a bit like a snowflake, they're just one of a kind.'
Gorman immediately set about trying to find other googlewhacks, and soon came across one on the website womenanddogsuk.co.uk, a site devoted to pictures of women with their canines. Rather than be put off, he contacted the site's compiler and encouraged him to start whacking. Before long Gorman was in contact with googlewhackers throughout the world.
Within weeks the comedian, in search of a third concept to follow two acclaimed themed BBC television series, had boarded a plane to Washington DC to meet a fellow whacker. In the following months he travelled over 80,000 miles on 25 flights in search of other devotees of the craze. His voyage, which saw him meet a religious guru in San Diego and a cross-dressing Kylie Minogue wannabe in Australia, has provided the material for his current UK tour and a book that will be out this January.
Not all whackers feel the need to go to such extremes, although Stock did notice a competitive element creeping into whacking. 'A complex points system did start where different words were given more points depending on how often they occurred individually on Google.
'Fortunately this trend seems to have died down a bit and most of the site's regular whackers now tend to go for words related to current events or whacks that rhyme or have some humour to them.'