Man Gets Hot Under The Collar With Laundering Charge ; Starts Breathing In Short Pants

If Swindon had a Court TV channel then you can be certain it would be covering gavel-to-gavel the ongoing case of Leo Bloom, 23, a town man who's up before the magistrates for a charge of over laundering 323,000 tons of only slightly dirty laundry.

'' He was always a very clean lad and then once he'd got a job at an insurance company and got on quite well he developed a really hard habit. It started off with him having three clean shirts every week, then built up to one every day and it got to the point where he took them to work so he had one for the morning, lunch, afternoon and another one for the drive home in the evening.'' That comment from Brenda Bloom, Leo's mother of 178 Cleaner Close, Grange Park.

The police only caught up with Mr Bloom after he confessed. The authorities were alerted after a eagle-eyed check-out lady at Asda spotted him buying 37 packs of Daz and 28 bottles of fabric softener, the supermarket chain have a limit of 10 bottles on each range of cleaning product.

The Swindon Blog Says ; This is Mr Bloom's first offence so maybe his clean record will count toward him!

LATE EDITION ; A police spokesman said they hope to scrub out this type of crime in town, ''it's a stain and we want to be whiter than white by an amnesty on overlaundering, so people can make a clean breast of it.'' Further comment was unavailable as the desk officer was busy consulting a thesaurus and was stuck in the loo, trying to find a clean sheet, sorry, page.