a sumo tournament, an old man in the Kuramae police station nonchalantly said, "This wrestler is going to win tomorrow's sumo tournament." The reason why this cop knew this, Yamauchi writes, is that the police needed to plan security for the parade route from the Tokyo's Sumo Hall to the winning sumo wrestler's sumo stable.

"This wrestler is going to win tomorrow's sumo tournament."

For decades, sumo has been accused of match-rigging. In the book Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner even laid out their hypothesis as to why sumo matches were fixed after examining the iffy sport's winning percentage. The book also recounts the tale of two former wrestlers who were going to hold a press conference in which they were going to details sumo's match-rigging, drugallowance and reserved seating.

Alongside the three services a week to New York starting in July, the airline will start twice-weekly flights to Fort Lauderdale in Florida and to Los Angeles, also for under £200.

The venture recalls the pioneering efforts of the doomed Laker Airways, which briefly blew open the transatlantic aviation market with its low-fares model before going bust in 1982. So far its no-frills emulators have resisted moving into long-haul. Ryanair's Michael O'Leary has frequently expressed interest but claimed that the economics currently rule out longer low-cost flights.

However, Norwegian's chief executive, Bjørn Kjos, said that his airline was uniquely placed to succeed through the combination of having already operated a no-frills short-haul model and acquiring the Dreamliner, which should cut fuel bills by at least 20%. Kjos