CLOSED Circuit Television: is it the dawn of Big Brother? Well to listen to some tales it is more like a re-run of Candid Camera. Since the police installed CCTV cameras across Lancaster and Morecambe they have proved invaluable - already recent figures have shown an incredible drop in car crime. But for the police operators who sit on the camera control panel watching everyday activities in our streets they can also prove an immense source of fun.

Here's just some of the stories the square-eyed operators have to tell...

Imagine a scene from one of Laurel & Hardy's classic films transported to Lancaster town centre.

The operators watched how one man was so drunk he couldn't stand up. He tried to get up and kept falling in the gutter. Insp David Thornton, who was instrumental in installing the system, said it was very entertaining. He said: "He was doing no harm to anyone and it was very amusing to see him stagger about."

Some of the people who loiter around the town centre have cottoned on to the fact they are in full view of the cameras and have cunningly removed themselves from their usual watering spots to avoid them. Others are totally oblivious to the fact their unusual and often unlawful actions are being caught on film.

One woman was spied removing a parking ticket from her car and sneakily putting it on to someone else's car! As she drove off she was followed through the streets by the cameras and later stopped by the police for drink-driving.

Another man was forced to admit to walking across the bonnet of a car in the early hours of the morning after being caught on camera.

The quarter-of-a-million pound cameras can zoom in on people and buildings from 800 metres away and then send crystal clear pictures back to Lancaster police station.

Insp Thornton added: "Often people are totally oblivious to the presence of cameras and claim they have behaved but when they see themselves on video they are forced to eat humble pie."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.