WHEN Richard Booker discovered his brand new mountain bike had been stolen, he was angry - but not surprised.

The bike, which Richard, 21, had saved up £200 to buy, was the 18th he has had stolen in the past three years.

Richard, who works as a nanny, has always locked his bikes up when he leaves them but it has done nothing to deter the thieves.

All the bikes were stolen in and around the Bluebird Court and Church Road area of Hove where Richard works.

His last bike was his pride and joy, a brand new yellow and black mountain bike costing £200. But he only managed to hold on to it for four months before it too was stolen.

Richard said: "I'm getting a bit fed up with it all. It just seems everywhere I put a bike it disappears and I am very unlucky.

"They managed to break through the bike lock with the alarm but I couldn't even open it with the key."

Luckily he always takes out insurance because although the police have got 12 of the thefts on file, they have not been able to locate any of his stolen bikes.

Unbelievable

He lives at home in Devil's Dyke Road, Hove, and his mother Margaret believes her unfortunate son's bad luck must have broken all the records.

She said: "It's unbelievable. He always buys a decent type of lock to secure his bike but that doesn't seem to make any difference.

"He spent nearly £40 on a lock with an alarm but that didn't stop them, even though it let out an ear-piercing racket.

"Every time it happens he's furious and has to walk four miles to work until he gets the money to buy a new one. We all know he hasn't got a hope in hell of getting them back.

"Most people who cycle might usually get one bike stolen but this is taking the biscuit."

A police spokesman agreed that Richard's tally of bike losses seemed unusually high.

He said: "I would suggest to anyone who has a bike to lock it to something secure in a public, well-lit place. You shouldn't leave it in the same spot for too long either.

"The difficulty we have is in proving who a bike belongs to. We run days where people can come along and get their bike post-coded for free so we can identify the owner.

"At one stage we had an operation running to catch these people. During the London to Brighton bicycle ride we had a lot of trouble with people driving around in vans looking to steal bikes, although not all the ones taken were locked up."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.