Sky divided in Brackaville

The PSNI have warned people in East Tyrone to be wary of a man with a strong South Armagh accent going from door-to-door selling bits of the sky above their houses.

The fraudster, who calls himself ‘Francie’, claims to work for ‘The Sky’ and attempts to sell 16-square feet of sky for £322 in a one-off cash payment. Police have worked out that he targets houses with no satellite dishes in the hope that the residents don’t know much about how Sky TV works.

One woman from Newmills, Dervla Adkins (44), admitted she took on the deal despite having grave reservations about how it all worked:

“Francie from The Sky was very convincing. He said the new Tory government were going to privatise any bits of sky not already bought and that they’d be using it for testing missiles and stuff. I certainly didn’t want that over my roof so I bought it and he gave me a certificate explaining the area of the sky I owned. He said my TV reception would be deadly now too because birds and things would not be allowed to fly through a purchased bit of sky.”

Adkins revealed her suspicions to the police after she spotted a whole flock of blackbirds sitting on her chimney the next day in her recently purchased sky bit, without a care in the world.

The PSNI have received 32 calls from house-owners in the greater Coalisland area who also fell for the sky deal. They were also called to a violent argument in Brackaville over who owned what bit of sky for kite flying and for smoke blowing from chimneys into other bits of sky owned by others.