There are several things you could buy with $25,000; a night in the world’s most expensive hotel, maybe a speedboat… but some people would rather just splash out on William Shatner’s kidney stone.

On Monday, William Shatner – famous for his role in Star Trek and his interesting cover version of Mr Tambourine Man – agreed to sell a kidney stone passed last autumn for £25,000 to GoldenPalace.com, home to all manner of freakish celebrity tat.

Not that William Shatner (CDs/DVDs/Books) needs money so badly that he’s willing to
piss a giant painful rock of crystals out of his body for cash, of course. The
money raised from the sale of his kidney stone will go to Habitat For
Humanity, a housing charity. But that’s beside the point – you want to
hear a 74-year-old man talking about excruciating urinary system
maladies, don’t you. Oh, OK then…

Last autumn, William Shatner was rushed to hospital after suffering
back pain so intense that he dropped to his knees during the filming of his
TV series Boston Legal. Doctors found a kidney stone inside Shatner and operated on
him in a gruesome-sounding procedure involving the use of some string
to aid the passing of the stone. Shatner said of it:

"It was just unbelievable and it made you think about what pain is… [the stone was so big that] you’d want to wear it on your finger … If you subjected it to extreme heat, it might turn out to be a diamond."

GoldenPalace.com -
an Internet casino which has in the past bought Paris
Hilton-autographed staplers, a potato that looks like Pete Townsend,
Britney Spears‘ pregnancy test and the Pope’s old car – paid $25,000 for
Shatner’s kidney stone after William turned down an offer of $15,000
for it. In a statement, GoldenPalace.com chief executive officer Richard Rowe announced:

"This is a bold new addition to our fleet."

Read more:

Actor Shatner sells kidney stone – BBC

[story by Stuart Heritage]