A 25-year-old man ‘in relatively high spirits’ on a night out in Barnstaple, Devon, tried to make love to an ambulance after punching then setting fire to a packet of peanuts in a telephone box.

North Devon Magistrates’ Court heard how Calum Ward, of Westaway Heights, Barnstaple, was caught on CCTV setting alight to the nuts after hitting them, before he spread himself in front of the emergency vehicle.

Police at the time commented that he ‘looked as though he was attempting to make love to the front of the ambulance’, counsel for the prosecution said.


Ward, who was said to have been planning to go home and ‘sober up’, was searched by attending officers, who discovered cannabis and amphetamines on his person.



Mark Haddow, prosecuting, said Ward had been held in police custody overnight in November last year after a similar incident in Bideford Quay. He was arrested for being drunk and disorderly after shouting insults at a Scottish police officer.

Mr Haddow, coincidentally also Scottish, said: ‘He had a great deal of difficulty standing up but, despite this, police were offering him the chance to go home.’

Representing himself, Ward told the court: ‘I did start using drugs and drinking.

‘I have seen the error of my ways with that.’

He was sentenced to a community order with a supervision requirement for six months and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £60.