Some people complain to the council about the endless ringing of church bells, others by cockerels crowing at dawn. Now a man yelling “strawberries for a pound” too early, too often and too loudly can be added to that list.

A market trader called – appropriately – Wayne Bellows has been ordered by his local council to turn down the noise because it is causing a nuisance.

Bellows has vowed to fight what he called the “completely bizarre and utterly ridiculous” order from Lymington and Pennington town council in Hampshire.

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“I have been doing this all my life, ever since I was a kid. I’ve never done anything differently and never had any complaints,” he said. “When I got the letter saying I was making too much noise, I didn’t believe it and threw it away. Then the council phoned and told me to stop shouting in the morning and only do it in the afternoon.

“We are there from 6.30am but I don’t start calling out until about 10am at the earliest. But I did what they said. Then they called again to say I was still too loud.”

He said he yelled the usual things, such as “strawberries for a pound” and felt the council was telling him not to shout at all. “You can’t get anywhere with them,” he said. “It’s their way or no way. It gets you down. I’ve got to do my job and make a living.”

The town’s mayor, Barry Dunning, said Bellows had not been asked to stop completely. “As far as I know, we only asked him to tone it down a little bit and not to shout early in the morning,” he said.

There has been a market in Lymington for 800 years and Dunning said he had sympathy for Bellows.

“I’m stuck between the devil and the blue really. Personally, I love the market. It is our crown jewel. It’s so important to the town,” he said.

“Calling out is part of the market. He has my sympathy. To me, as mayor, it wasn’t a problem. But nuisance can be whatever you want to make it. We had a complaint and we have to follow that up.”

Bellows has promised to take the matter up at the next stallholders’ meeting with the council: “I must fight this for markets everywhere.”