London Fire Brigade issues voracious tambourine warning

The London Fire Brigade is asking the public to be a bit more careful around letterboxes, shredders and tambourines as it issues a breakdown of 417 incidents where it was obliged to "release people, or body parts, which had become trapped in objects or machinery".

The list of last year's mishaps features "a woman with her foot glued to the floor in Islington" and "a child with its head stuck in a tambourine in Southwark". Less entertaining were several cases of people with their hands jammed in letterboxes and shredders.

The Brigade also had to extricate 36 unfortunates from handcuffs, as well as expediting "the removal of 'other' objects from 74 people".

The press release doesn't elaborate on just what these "other" objects are, but Bootnotes regulars will all be thinking the same thing, as is indeed the case.

The Sun explains that one of the shouts involved two fire engines packed with 10 firefighters dispatched to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, to remove a chap's todger from a metal ring.

Dave Brown, the Brigade’s Assistant Commissioner for Operations and Mobilising, said: “You wouldn’t believe some of the incidents we’re called to deal with – people manage to get themselves trapped in some very weird and wonderful places – but there is a serious side to this.

“These incidents are time consuming, costly and take up the precious time of our crews who are then unavailable to attend other, potentially life threatening, emergencies."

He concluded: “We’d ask the public to take greater care to avoid getting themselves into these often ridiculous situations and to think carefully before dialling 999 and calling us out if there isn’t an emergency.” ®