MERV Stanley feels he doesn’t merit the praise and cash reward handed to him by a Swindon judge.

We beg to differ. The 65-year-old retired postman deserves not only these rewards but the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.

Mr Stanley was in the Town Gardens when he heard what he describes with remarkable understatement as a fracas.

The source was a drug-dealing piece of detritus who was attacking another man with an 18-inch machete.

Any member of the public confronted by such a horror could be forgiven for doing nothing other than flee the scene. Mr Stanley, though unarmed, did the very opposite.

Seizing a wooden folding chair, the only remotely suitable item to hand, he got between the thug and his victim, refused to yield, and fended off the violent criminal until he fled.

In court Merv was described as having acted like a lion tamer, but that wasn’t quite correct. The lion tamers of old at least had a whip or a stick as extra protection against savage attack.

The thug has been given a 12-year sentence and should count himself lucky. Society would almost certainly be far better off were the door to his cell simply welded shut and left that way.

Mr Stanley, meanwhile, has joined a very select band of people indeed.

Many of us wonder how we would act in such a situation; would we face and subdue the evil or shrink away and hope it didn’t notice us?

Mr Stanley now knows his personal answer to that question.