Tracking web gossip

Some pretty weird and wonderfull story in the news:

-Tom Jones has insured his chest hair.

It has been all the buzz on the web. But where did this story come from? The Mirror of course.
"Like a vintage wine, Tom just gets better with age," a ‘body hair mole’ told the Mirror. Even at the grand old age of 67, the ladies love his hip-thrusting moves and catching a sneaky peak of his famously rugged chest hair. A spokesperson for Jones, who is currently working on a new album in America, failed to confirm whether he had joined the list of celebrities with assets which are too costly to lose."

Some serious reporting going on there.
Reply on Sir Tom's site:
'The story published in the Daily Mirror (UK) on Feb 5 is completely fabricated. No such insurance policy exists or has ever been considered.  We assume this is just the Mirror having a bit of fun and hope no one takes this kind of 'reporting' seriously. '

What frightens me more is the fact that this piece of excellent journalism has been copied around the world within a matter of hours. Ok, it's gossip. But this happens daily with tons of news items which all go unconfirmed. Just goes to show again that it's not the quantity of news sources that confirms or denies a fact but the quality.

On Lloyds' site it only stated they had been approached by an un-named celebrity to insure his/hers chest hair. And that was way back in 2006. Insuring body parts isn't new to the market. Lloyd’s has previously insured Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ fingers; Marlene Dietrich’s legs.

So insuring chest hair . Against what might I ask? Fire? Theft? It turning grey? Falling out? Someone accidentally shaving it off?
This is side splittingly funny. According to Jonathan Thomas, active underwriter for Syndicate 1607 with Creechurch International Underwriters, which underwrites Lloyd's celebrity insurance policies one of the most unusual policy requests he ever received came from an agent who wanted to insure an undisclosed celebrity's chest hair. Thomas devised a policy that provides men with cover for up to a mutually agreed and justified sum insured for permanent loss of chest hair caused by an accident. According to the policy, insureds filing a claim must have lost 85% of their chest hair, and the loss must be verified by two independent experts. Loss through illness or the hair simply falling out is not covered, nor is hair loss from nuclear contamination, terrorism, mass destruction, war or revolution, snorkeling or hunting on horseback. In addition, fire-eaters are excluded.
So we're still not sure what celebrity we are talking about. First logical step would be a celeb that has made chest fur hisTM. And yes, Tom Jones does spring to mind, but other likely candidates could well be any other of the multitude of nicely dence chest hair bearers. Burt Reynolds, Harrison Ford, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Connery?

Who would want to insure chest hair for loss of income? Three words: Get over yourself!