Life-saving sausage gives Charles idea for police

A STORY plucked from the pages of the Herald Express about a Totnes butcher and his black-pudding rescue has inspired Prince Charles to come up with a new idea for arming the UK’s police force.

The Duke of Cornwall, heir to the throne, revealed his unusual crime-fighting idea during the filming for a documentary ahead of his 70th birthday.

The Prince suggested that all police could be armed with black pudding thanks to a story highlighted by us in January this year.

The BBC documentary crew filmed Prince Charles as he visited a butcher in Scotland. While there Prince Charles said: “There’s an awful story, this poor butcher who got locked into his own cold room, and there’s a button you press to get out and it had frozen up or something.

“He was getting more and more desperate, poor man, freezing to death, and nobody

Prince Charles tells the black pudding story of Totnes butcher Chris McCabe on the TV documentary could hear him shouting and screaming and finally his eye fell on a black pudding which had come from the wonderful local butcher in Ballater, here in Scotland.

“It was wonderfully frozen, and he beat it a couple of times and got out.”

Prince Charles said the black pudding was a “highly valuable object”.

“Perhaps from now on the police ought to be armed with black puddings.

“Good God, they’re using frozen black puddings, the swine!“

Chris McCabe, 70, had used the frozen blood sausage to beat his way out of the cold storage unit in Totnes.

Chris was trapped inside the freezer where temperatures are kept at -20C and the plastic release button on the inside of the door had frozen solid.

Mr McCabe said at the time: “It was really frightening, particularly as there was no one

Chris McCabe with the black pudding which saved his life else to come to my rescue.”

After realising the lock would not release, Mr McCabe picked up the 1.3kg black pudding and used it to whack the button, until eventually the door sprung free.

He added: “After a bit of bashing, it gave way and I could escape.”

Chris, a father-of-four from Totnes, said: “Black pudding saved my life, without a doubt. No one could hear me banging because it is outside, round the back of the shop.”

‘Perhaps from now on the police ought to be armed with black puddings.

“Good God, they’re using frozen black puddings, the swine!’