An ambulance crew who were called to the home of an amateur handyman who was working alone in his shed, had the unenviable task of freeing his testicles from a vice that had become stuck once tightened.
Ernest Spurgeon, 61, had told his wife, Vera, he would be 'busy' all afternoon, just before she set off into the town on a shopping excursion.
Once alone, however, Ernest got busy in areas 'other than carpentry'. He told the ambulance crew later that his predicament was probably due to damage on the vice's tightening handle.
"I'd heard the saying, and always wondered what it would be like to have your nuts squeezed in a vice. Of course, I didn't realize the vice was going to stick on me, otherwise I would have had it serviced first!"
Dave Robson, of the emergency services crew, said:
"Our advice is, if you absolutely have to use tools in this way, to get a qualified technician to look at them first, to avoid any nasty accidents."
Vera, who had returned from her shopping trip with a nutcracker, said:
"He wants his brain looking at!"
