Firefighters fume after call to free man from toilet

9:46am Wednesday 21st May 2008

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Furious fire fighters were called to a house to find an apparently drunk man had shut himself in the toilet.

A crew from Battersea arrived at the Leathwaite Road home in the early hours of Wednesday, May 14, where the man had been trapped for an hour-and-a-half.

His friend had been unable to release him, despite evidence of several marks on the door from where it had been kicked.

But the crew quickly released the man using a simple option that had not yet been explored - inserting a screwdriver into the lock.

Fire fighter David Waterman said: "It was the kind of lock you get in public toilets which can be easily opened from the outside using a coin or a flat bladed screwdriver.

"I thought the friend would have already tried that and the lock had broken, but we tried it and sure enough it worked."