The fake story featured in Galway First under the headline "Lonely man brought donkey to hotel room, court told" and recounted the story of a Galway man who had managed to smuggle the donkey past a gullible receptionist telling her it was a very big rabbit.

Thousands of web users forced the paper's website to crash as news of the bizarre court case spread across the world and many news organisations ran it as a bona-fide story.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, Declan Varley, author of the story and editor of the Galway Avertiser group of newspapers, said: "We set up Galway First recently as an alternative paper for people in the city. Each week, we have two pages in the middle called 'Galway Worst', which are made up of satirical stories.

"The tongue-in-cheek piece about the court case was written in a traditional news style so people seemed to believe that it was real.

"As the story stated that the man was fined Euro2,000 for bringing the donkey to the room under the Unlawful Accommodation of Donkeys Act 1837, a lot of people were wondering what happened in 1837 to bring about this law."

Within two days, more than a million people read the article on www. galwayfirst. ie causing the website to repeatedly collapse.

Varley explained: "The story was run as a true story in the Metro in London as well as on reputable news sites in the US and Germany. "More than 50 US TV stations ran it as a true story in their 'and finally' section at the end of their news bulletins."

The piece told the story of how Thomas Aloysius McCarney brought a donkey into a Galway hotel room and dressed himself in latex and handcuffs, before the donkey ran amok in the hotel, rousing guests and leading to garda� being called.