Noisy sex sparks 100 complaints from miffed neighbours – and one randy town had the most culprits
NOISY nookie next door sparked at least 100 complaints from neighbours in a year.
Loud love-making with moaning, groaning, headboard banging and squeaky bedsprings stopped others getting a good night's kip.
And in some cases, council officials gave those complaining noise diaries or recording equipment to monitor sound levels.
Randy Rotherham had the highest number of recorded complaints about the racket made during romps, with 15.
One irate caller in Islington, North London, told the council the neighbours 'were making sex noises through the night and the bed was making creaking and banging noises as well'.
A resident blamed for a sexual din in Bradford was sent a council warning letter.
When that did not work, a council worker planted a recording device in the home of the neighbour who had complained.
A noise officer then listened to the recording, and deemed the racket 'unreasonable'.
A resident of Telford, Shrops, complained the neighbours' headboard kept banging against the wall.
And in Kingston, South West London, a local said the couple next door were 'having the loudest sex imaginable'.
The survey of councils under Freedom of Information rules found 30 recorded 98 such complaints.
But the true total will be much higher as the majority could not give a number. Culprits could be fined £110 or even face court action.
This Morning's Holly and Phil in shock as they listen to noisy sex session of couple slammed by their neighbours
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He seemed relaxed and told reporters: 'At the moment casualties appear to be very low … the bombs appear to be smaller than on the last occasion.' He told people to stay where they were and go about their normal business. Behind him in the street people wandered past seemingly unconcerned or unaware of what was going on. In Downing Street the prime minister, Tony Blair, who was hosting his Australian counterpart, John Howard, said the police and security services had things under control. He didn't want to minimise the seriousness of the new attacks but said it was important people reacted calmly. He was going back to his scheduled meetings. The commissioner made another statement shortly afterwards, saying the situation was fully under control: there had been four failed bombings that day and one non-fatal casualty. Our presenter Anna Botting concluded: 'As far as Sir Ian Blair and Tony Blair are concerned, incident over.' Police had the failed bombers' DNA, fingerprints, CCTV images and their bombs. They hoped to establish where they had bought their rucksacks. I stressed the urgency of the manhunt but reported that detectives were confident of catching them. I was still on the Scotland Yard pavement. I didn't know that police had already located a man they thought was one of the suspects after linking images and more gym cards from the scene to a flat in south London. When he left the building undercover armed police followed him to Stockwell Tube station. Around midday I had a call from Peter Rose, a former Fleet Street crime reporter who was now working freelance and had better contacts than me. 'Hi Brunty,' he said quite calmly, 'they've shot dead one of the wanted bombers at Stockwell Tube.' I hesitated to report it straight away. Could I be sure Peter was right? It would be a big thing for me to get wrong. I needed another source. My rivals along the street were chatting among themselves, so they obviously hadn't had the same tip. I started ringing contacts to corroborate the story. A few minutes later a senior detective I knew walked past and without breaking his stride said to me in little more than a whisper: 'Have you heard? We've shot one of the suicide bombers.' He was gone before I could mutter my thanks. I took a deep breath and reported what I knew, live on air. There wasn't much detail but it was huge news — I said I understood police had shot dead a man they believed was one of the failed bombers. I sensed other reporters stop talking and lean in to catch what I was saying. Before I'd finished speaking I could hear their phones ringing. The next few hours were pretty chaotic. At the afternoon press conference Sir Ian Blair said the dead suspect was linked directly to the ongoing investigation. He understood the man was challenged by armed police and refused to obey. His press office told reporters the suspect had jumped the station barrier. It turned out all of that was wrong. The next day police revealed they knew the man's identity and confirmed he was not one of the failed bombers. Later they named him as the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes. He was 27. We didn't know all the details, but he was the tragic victim of mistaken identity and poor communications amid the heightened fear of another terror attack. So ended one of the bleakest days in Scotland Yard's history. I had a foreign holiday booked to Florida in two days' time, but I was still outside the Yard reporting on the manhunt. I warned my family they may have to go without me. The bomber Yassin Hassan Omar, whose device failed to ignite at Warren Street station, had been arrested two days earlier in Birmingham. It emerged later that he'd escaped London dressed in a burqa. Around 10am a viewer in west London called to say there was a lot of police activity nearby and that residents of a block of flats were being evacuated. And yes, she let us put a camera crew into her flat overlooking the scene. Police confirmed they had an operation going on. I didn't tell them we had a great view of it. We were soon broadcasting live pictures of the unfolding drama: roadblocks, streets lined with police, fire and ambulance vehicles and people being hurried away. When we showed firearms officers putting on full body armour and balaclavas ready for a raid, there was uproar at Scotland Yard. Hayman, the assistant commissioner, rang me asking — no, insisting — that we stop live coverage immediately. He didn't tell me exactly what was going on, but explained that if someone in the flat they were monitoring was watching our pictures of the police tooling up, they might just detonate a bomb. We stopped our live broadcast but filmed what happened for later use. After a two-hour stand-off, two of the failed bombers, Muktar Said Ibrahim and Ramzi Mohammed, were arrested at the flat. That night we ran footage of one being led away and audio of police shouting commands earlier for the suspects to give themselves up. They obeyed and emerged in their underpants, as instructed, with their hands raised. A few hours later the fourth failed bomber, Hussain Osman, was arrested in Rome. It had been an extraordinary three weeks and the biggest police investigation in Britain. It was far from over, but I was finally released from my spot and joined my family for our holiday. When I returned two weeks later I covered the early court appearances of the would-be bombers. When I interviewed Sir Ian Blair on his resignation three years later, he said he considered Jean Charles de Menezes to be the 53rd victim of the terrorists, adding: 'I'm deeply sorry about his death.' The episode had clearly blighted his time as Britain's top cop. He endeared himself to me when a BBC documentary interviewer asked him what was the first thing he did when he was told of the 7/7 bombings. 'I did what everyone else did,' he replied, 'I turned on Sky News.' To their credit, the Beeb producers kept his words in. In the wake of 7/7, Tony Blair declared: 'The rules of the game are changing.' His government hurried in new counterterror laws in anticipation of more attacks. MI5 embarked on a huge recruitment drive with a 50 per cent boost to its funding agreed before 7/7. More tragedies came: a car bomb at Glasgow airport, the murder of the soldier Lee Rigby, stabbings on London Bridge, the killing of pedestrians and a policeman in Westminster, the Manchester Arena blast. And I've reported on them all — usually from the pavement outside Scotland Brunt has been the Sky News crime correspondent since 1994. He is the author of No One Got Cracked Over the Head for No Reason: Dispatches from a Crime Reporter (Biteback £10.99). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
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