Outrage and anger engulfed Cookstown last night after a 66-year-old man was heard to say he didn’t like sausages. The remarkable outburst occurred as an elderly woman sauntered past Sheehy’s Chippy on Sunday morning after visiting her uncle and overheard a discussion between a Brazilian tourist and local man Seamy Gas.

Mary Mulligan told us:

My hearing aid had been turned up as my 115-year old uncle can hardly speak, so I heard the whole lot. The foreign lad was asking if this was where George Best ate his sausages. Seamy shrugged his shoulders and I distinctly heard him say “sure how would I know, I hate the hoors”. He then gave him the middle finger.

As the man says….was Bestie wrong?

Mulligan told anyone she met for the remainder of the journey of what happened, even knocking on the doors of families she didn’t know. Within an hour, up to 1000 men, women and children formed a mob and stormed through the centre of the town holding lighted blackheads and carrying banners with slogans such as ‘sausages are deadly’ or ‘you’re fuckin dead meat, Seamy’.

Late last night Mr Gas was holed up in his flat outside the Greenvale with over 5000 protesters gathered on his lawn and back field. The police refused to intervene with one PSNI constable telling us, “you reap what you sow. He has made his own bed. If there’s a riot, there’s a riot”. Mr Gas’s lawyer has issued a statement claiming Mrs Mulligan heard it wrong and that Mr Gas will eat a whole plate of sausages in the town square to appease the locals.