The village has been voted the most shipshape in Buckinghamshire six times But a terrible smell has forced it to withdraw from this year’s competition Age: The Buckinghamshire village is mentioned in the Domesday Book Chalfont St Giles has everything you’d want and expect in a village often referred to as “quintessentially English”: village green Which is why it has attracted celebrity residents Erm, celebrity? Sorry. Noel Gallagher used to live there. The Osbournes – Ozzy and Sharon – are up the road. It has been used as a filming location for the BBC sitcom As Time Goes By, an episode of Peep Show, and Dad’s Army (where it filled in for Walmington-on-Sea). “Chalfonts” is also cockney rhyming slang for haemorrhoids John Milton retired here in 1665 to escape the plague in London Chalfont St Giles has won the county’s best kept village competition organised by the Campaign to Protect Rural England Presumably it’s going for the title again this year Why? Sabotage by Chalfont St Peter? Foul play? Foul smell more like it – the stench has been wafting across the green for months Djokovic pulls out due to chronic flatulence I’m going to go right out on a limb here and take a wild stab in the dark. Would it have anything to do with a private water company? It would! Thames Water The Amersham Road Balancing Tank has been overflowing discharging sewage into the River Misbourne “We’re all gutted,” the parish council’s Robert Gill said “It’s important to villagers that we enter these competitions but we were left with no choice,” Gill added And it’s definitely that? Not just the normal countryside smells? Gill said he worried that contamination levels in the river were high after Thames Water took samples. A Thames Water spokesperson told the BBC the wet winter had resulted in high water levels and that diluted wastewater had been discharged into the Misbourne “for which we are sorry”