QUIRKY WORLD ... Real-life castaways saved after spelling out ‘help’

MICRONESIA: The men rescued in this tale of three castaways were not named Tom Hanks, or Gilligan, or Robinson Crusoe. Though they might as well have been.

In a scene straight from Hollywood, or a New Yorker cartoon, a US Navy plane spotted the word “help” spelled out in palm fronds on a beach on a deserted island in the remote Pacific.

The three men, missing for three days after a wave overtook the skiff they were travelling in, were found waving their orange life jackets on the tiny Micronesian island of Fanadik, hundreds of kilometres north of Papua New Guinea.