Ponds charges, hubcap fences and stolen cameras - this week’s Ham&High from 15 years ago

The Ham&High is delving into its 2005 archives through history flashbacks charting the brilliant, awful and downright bizarre...

In the February 11 edition, then-London mayor Ken Livingstone branded Heath bosses "silly" for proposing to charge swimmers for dips in Hampstead's famous ponds.

The now-expelled Labour member and former MP waded into the row as the Corporation of London announced the era of free swimming was over. Swimmers were set to pay £2 per day to use the ponds with a concessionary rate of £1.

A Kentish Town banjo maker was given the all-clear to keep a fence made from 200 hubcaps. The 67-year-old made the fence from hubcaps that had fallen off cars passing his home in Torriano Avenue.

Police took the unusual step of releasing photos of a children's Christmas party in a bid to find the victim of a camera theft. Camden bobbies developed the photos after finding the camera on a man arrested in Kilburn High Road.