'˜Ere, guess what I had in the back of my cab today'

Off the top of my head I can recall being shown ‘a very rare Biro’ an equally exotic two-bar electric fire and an unusual three-pin plug.

There have been psychic hamsters, an eagle owl and once, a shire horse.

But never can any of us recall being summoned to the front office to be confronted by a tiger.

But in the late 1940s that was the fate awaiting some poor junior reporter in our old Stanhope Road office.

I was searching for old pictures of that building when I stumbled across the photo here.

Apparently the woman had just called into The Evening News with her rather large cat and was pictured getting into a taxi afterwards.

What the cabbie made of it all was not recorded.