DRAMATIC scenes which saw police cars and ambulances racing down Hampstead High Street set tongues wagging this week.

And after an injured man was carried out of the Horseshoe pub in Heath Street on a stretcher on Monday morning, word quickly began to spread that a gun-man was on the loose.

But rather than an O.K. Corral style shoot-out in the bar - it turned out that a workman had simply fallen off his ladder.

A Camden police spokesman confirmed: “A man who was working on the pub fell off his ladder and had to be taken to the Royal Free where he is being treated for his injuries. There is no suspicion of criminal activity.”