A number of youths trooped into Rickmansworth police station during the weekend to report “a suspicious object half-buried on the river side”.

They had been fishing in the Colne behind houses in Uxbridge Road when they noticed the cylinder which resembled a bomb. They told some of the residents, who advised them to tell the police.

A police sergeant and a constable went to see, borrowed a garden fork from one of the residents and dug.

The “bomb” turned out to be the top of an old kitchen copper.

“Blimey,” said one of the lads. “The cops have copped a copper.”

[From the Watford Observer of April 17, 1964]