All hail Sizzling Stebbing, rural crime fighter

Something about the sausage van seemed wrong to the BHA’S senior clerk of the scales

To be one of the BHA’S clerks of the scales you have to be, by nature, meticulous; to be their senior clerk of scales doubly so. It is not a job for the slipshod, slapdash or sloppy, because accuracy is everything.

Having done it man and boy, the top dog in the BHA’S weights and measures department, Charles Stebbing, is imbued with a certain thoroughness. Put it this way, Stebbing is never going to add 2lb and 2lb and get 5lb.

Recently, however, he was home alone in his North Yorkshire village – Mrs Stebbing, still on a high from her success as the front end of a cow in the local production of Cold Comfort Farm, was away on a girls’ trip – when, in the small hours, he was awoken by the call of nature.

Sleepily he went to the bathroom and on his way back to bed noticed, in the moonlight, a Heck sausage delivery van parked in the street outside. Even in the modern 24/7 world in which we live, Stebbing thought it a little odd that the popular local family-run sausage-maker would be delivering at 3.30 in the morning.

Nevertheless, he returned to bed and contemplated the situation for a moment. You didn’t need to be Miss Marple, he thought, to know that something about the early morning sausage delivery “did not smell right”.

So he returned to the window and called the local police – good luck with the ‘local’ bit of that in most parts of Britain. No sooner had he put the phone down than there was a rumbling noise in the street outside; two lads were brazenly pushing a quad bike, which they had just half-inched from the neighbouring farm. Sausage it most definitely was not and yet they were about to load it into Heck’s refrigerated van.

Mustering his most authoritative voice, he peered from his bedroom window and yelled: “Oi. Stop, thief!”

There are parts of the country where, I have no doubt, thieves caught in the act would have menacingly told him to go forth and multiply and gestured it too, but they clearly have some respect in North Yorkshire; they dropped the quad and scarpered.

This time Stebbing went straight to the top, dialling 999. A patrolling police car was diverted and arrived within an impressive two minutes.

Presented with the two hot vehicles, it called up assistance in the shape of a helicopter with heat-seeking thermal imaging and, even better from Stebbing’s point of view – he is a hunting man, after all – tracker dogs, which set off in pursuit of their quarry.

The manhunt came to nought after the scent went cold the other side of a few paddocks where, it is assumed, an accomplice was waiting in a car in case they were rumbled.

But, his adrenalin levels returning to normal, the hero of the hour returned to bed happy in the thought that, though it may have its limitations with cybercrime, it is heartening in this day and age that a good old fashioned “stop thief!” can still, on occasion, do the business.

It is Newmarket’s annual open weekend this Saturday and Sunday and it is getting bigger, better and flashier every year. With no racing at Headquarters, the action is much more centred on the town, at the National Heritage Centre on Saturday afternoon and on the Severals on Sunday.

There will be 18 yards open between 9.00 and 12.30 on Sunday including Mike Bell’s, where Big Orange will be star of the show.

At 8.00 on Warren Hill, Enable and Marsha will both be put through their paces before their respective trips to France a fortnight later.

The real entertainment takes place after lunch on Sunday when the lads take on the jockeys and trainers, apparently captained by Oli Bell, who is neither, in a football match.

Those taking part in the celebrity showjumping include Francesca Cumani (above), Jason Weaver, Andrea Atzeni, Josephine Gordon, James Doyle and Frankie Dettori.