FOR those of you with a juvenile sense of humour, 1993 brought the greatest headline in News Shopper history: FURY AS CABLE LAYING BRINGS MISERY.

This was a report of a man’s anger when cable TV engineers caused chaos by digging up the road outside his home in Dykes Way, Bromley.

News Shopper quoted the man saying: “They are 5ft tall and almost as wide.

“They are not discreet as it says in the brochure. To my mind, they are a form of pollution.”

Of course, he was talking about the junction boxes the engineers had installed on the pavements outside his home.

There was more embarrassing confusion when a young mother’s address was confused with that of a nearby prostitute by various men who turned up at her door.

The woman said she regularly found men “peering through the letterbox” of her flat in Upper Park Road, Bromley.

Even more embarrassing was a former legionnaire’s attempt to rob a bank with a chair leg taped to a book and covered with a plastic bag.

Staff at the Abbey National in Lee Green closed the emergency shutter, and the wannabe robber could do nothing but run away.

Most people who had made a terrible attempt at robbing a bank would try to hide their shame, but this man called the police immediately afterwards to give himself up.

The report reads: “Ten minutes later he called the police to confess to the raid.

“At first the astounded officer who took the call refused to believe the man, asking him: ‘Are you trying to wind us up?’”

But the hapless robber did convince the police he was the culprit, so he had one success that day.