A mother helped thwart a bank robber by giving him fake notes.

Clifford Hellier, 57, had already robbed two banks in a week when a heroic Natwest cashier hought she saw the handle of a gun in his pocket.

But despite her terror, NatWest cashier, the cashier gave Hellier a stack of fake bank notes instead of real money as well a dye capsule that covered the robber and his haul with pink paint.

Hellier, of Queen Victoria Avenue, Hove, was yesterday jailed for six years following three identical robberies in ten days in Brighton and Hove last month.