TWO of the strangest cheques ever written to pay court fines were handed over in Swindon on the same day.

One was on toilet paper while the other was on something rather more substantial.

“An angry plumber nearly blew a valve outside a Swindon Court today,” we wrote in early February of 1981.

“In protest against a parking fine he delivered his £6 fine cheque – on a washing machine.

“He had been fined for parking on a yellow line when he was delivering another machine.

“But in court, Steve New was furious that the magistrates expected him to park some distance from the delivery point and carry the heavy machine.

“And he decided to illustrate just how difficult it would have been by signing the cheque on a Hoover Automatic.

“He was nabbed by a traffic warden in Tennyson Street in July, after he had been on a single yellow line for seven minutes.”

The prosecution said he could have used the nearest civic car park, but Mr New pointed out that the car park was some distance away and always full.

He said after the case: “I’m prepared to go to jail over it. It’s happened before and I’ve always paid up. But it’s not the £6 that matters. It’s the principle. If the magistrates think it’s so easy to move a washing machine, let them move it down to my bank.”

Another unhappy motorist in court that day was fellow Swindonian Malcolm Hancock, who was do disgusted with his £20 fine for an illegal right turn that he wrote a cheque on a sheet of toilet paper.

The fact that his method of payment was perfectly legal didn’t stop the court from refusing to accept it – or ordering his arrest and threatening to send in the bailiffs.

He was also verbally abused from the bench, accused of being childish and irresponsible and, according to our report, prevented from stating his case.

The two men were not the only ones to have protested against what they saw as an injustice by writing cheques on unorthodox items.

As recently as 2008, a Suffolk man offered a cheque written on two sheets of toilet paper in response to what he saw as an unjust parking fine. The court accepted the cheque but tried to impose a £15 processing fee, which he refused to pay.

Compromise was eventually reached when the man agreed to a short period of ‘custody’ which amounted to sitting at the back of the court for an hour or so.