A former mayoress ran down a bike thief in her car - after rushing to confront him while wearing only a towel and being soaking wet from taking a shower.

Lesley Dedman spotted the crook from her bathroom window and then raced down to the driveway where she had seen him.

But by the time she got there he was already pedaling away down the road.

So grandmother Mrs Dedman threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater and jumped into her Jaguar to give chase.

She forced the man off her bike nearly a mile from her house after overtaking the cap-wearing culprit and mounting a pavement to block his way.

He crashed into the side of Mrs Dedman’s car and fell into the road.

The man was so angry that he swore at her before limping off.

The former Mayor of Ferndown, near Bournemouth, Dorset, described how she had just got out of the shower when she saw the thief leaving her driveway.

She said: ‘I thought “that’s odd, I’m sure the paper has been delivered already” and the bike he was on looked like my bike.

‘I rushed down in a towel and by that time he was down the road so I threw on a pair of jeans and a jumper.
Mrs Dedman as Mayor of Ferndown

‘I drove in the direction he had gone and soon caught up with him.

‘He appeared very perky and jaunty so I swerved in front of him on the pavement, cutting off his path.

‘He crashed into the side of my car and went under it.

‘He was furious and started punching my wing mirror. So I got out and just said “That’s my bike”.

‘I was shaking with a mixture of fear and rage and was soaking wet at the time. I must have looked like a wild woman.

‘I was just so livid that someone could take my bike that I was determined to get it back.

‘I would do the same again.’

Mrs Dedman, who is 5ft 5in tall, was shocked when she realised the thief was not a youth, as she had originally thought, but a burly middle-aged man.

The district councilor and nursing home owner, from Longham, near Bournemouth, called the police after returning home with her mangled Daimler bicycle on Friday evening.

Officers described the thief as having ginger-brown hair and wearing a white baseball cap.