A Beragh entrepreneur boasted yesterday of his ability to drive with no insurance, tax and ‘hardly any suspension on her’ since 1999. Paddy Jacobs, a clown/street entertainer in the area, has decided to ditch the motor for a new mountain bike he bought at a car boot sale in Trillick last week.

“Sure I’d only be traveling as far as Omagh or Cookstown for some child’s birthday party and the bike will do the same job. I was getting tired of hoodwinking the cops anyway. It’s time to come clean.”

Jacobs’ motor car.

Jacobs said he was often stopped by the police at the bottom of his loanan or on the Sheboy Road. He thinks they were sure there were no documentation for the vehicle he was driving and suspicious that there was no suspension at all.

“I’d see them rubbing their hands as I approached, like as if they’d finally got their man now. Sparks would be flying from the back of the Datsun. I’d be all nice and give them my faded licence. As they were squinting to make out my name and address, I’d quietly lift the mobile phone and phone the police to say that there was an on-going robbery somewhere close by. I was whispering like. It’d be phoned through to the cop in front of me and he’d be away like a shot. I’d just wind her up and drive off. I did the same trick over 300 times.”

Jacobs claims he’d change the nature of the prank phone call each time, from a bank heist to sheep rustling.

“There was one time they arrested the parish priest because I phoned through that he was leering at the female cooks in the school canteen. He was in the middle of devotions when they nabbed him and still took him to Omagh barracks. It got a bit silly at the end. I recently fooled them into driving to find a well because I said someone was pishing into it. There is no well in Beragh.”

The Beragh entertainer says he’ll not be getting a helmet for the bike and doesn’t know what an MOT certificate looks like.