CAR PARK ATTENDANT IN FRENCH LOAF FRACAS

A motorist was hospitalised yesterday after a car park attendant assaulted him while he was queuing to buy a ticket.

Darius Dunlop, of Decortwille Rise, Cheetingham, remains in intensive care in Froghill General after undergoing a three-hour operation to remove a baguette from his rear end.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Dunlop, 22, said: "I pulled into the White Horse Lane car park and reversed into a vacant space. The attendant clearly saw me do this, as he was sitting in his hut eating a French bread sandwich at the time. I locked the car and went over to the machine to buy a ticket. There was a lady at the machine so I waited.

"As I was standing there, I noticed the attendant leave his hut, walk across to my car and start writing in a little notebook.

"So I shouted to him that I was fully intending to buy a ticket and display it on my windscreen."

Mr Dunlop alleges that the attendant then marched across to him and told him that he was “a scruffy little Herbert who thinks he can do what the bloody hell he likes” before ranting incomprehensibly about Queen and country, the Paras and the deserts of Sinai.

“I turned away as I did not want to provoke him further by making eye contact,” said Mr Dunlop, “but he seemed to be working himself into a fury and then, all of a sudden, he attacked me with the baguette.”

Froghill Council spokesperson Gill McGill said: "We are very sorry indeed to hear of Mr Dunlop’s loaf-related injuries and we are investigating the situation.”

The Observer has learned that the attendant in question is a retired army veteran who suffers from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and has a history of unprovoked assaults against young people.

“There was a regrettable incident two years ago involving the same employee, a tub of taramasalata and a motor cyclist’s underpants,” Ms McGill said.

Mr Dunlop is understood to be making good progress, though he will require further surgery to check for residual ham fragments and bread crumbs in his large intestine.