trousers
Some trousers pictured earlier

A 54-year-old man from Whitechapel in East London went on a murderous killing spree after a pair of trousers he’d ordered from a catalogue purporting to be, ‘The most comfortable trousers you will ever buy’, failed to live up to the claim.

After trying them on and finding them slightly less comfortable than a pair he’d bought in Roman Road Market in the 1980s, Toby Dell, a diesel fitter from Dock Street, raced from his house and attacked twelve people with a steel tent pole, killing five and leaving seven others badly injured.

Dell told an Old Bailey jury yesterday: ‘The trousers were a disgrace and utterly failed to live up to the claim that they would be the most comfortable I’d ever purchased.

‘They were a bit tight for one thing and the turnups flapped around my ankles in a manner that I never experienced with the other trousers I bought in Roman Road in 1987.

‘I suppose I just lost my head but anyone else would have done the same given the circumstances.’

Sentencing Dell to a whole life tariff, Mr Justice Tracy-Carter told the defendant: ‘While I agree that your patience may have been sorely tested by these trousers it is completely unacceptable that you should kill innocent people to assuage your annoyance.

‘Society deserves to be protected from you and from anyone else who sees fit to kill people due to an uncomfortable or otherwise ill-fitting garment’

In 2012, a woman from neighbouring Shoreditch killed her entire family, including her grandparents, with a machete after a blouse she had ordered from Freeman’s catalogue was found to be a bit tight under the arms.