Two teenage cowards were chased by the same umbrella-wielding pensioner whose bag they had tried to steal.

At first, 75-year-old Adelaide Watson ticked them off, threatening to call the police. But when they returned with a hammer, she whacked them with an umbrella and chased them from Archway station.

Adelaide, from Upper Holloway, said it wasn’t a fair fight: “They weren’t tough-looking, as some boys of 16 are.

“I’m very active. I do exercises every morning and I can run too.

“The best defence is attack.”

Meanwhile, seven cars were crushed under an avalanche of poles and planks when scaffolding collapsed in Upper Holloway.

No one was injured, but the damage cost thousands of pounds. Painters had been decorating the Mulberry Tree pub in Holloway Road when the whole structure crumbled.

Pub landlady Kathleen Flattery said: “No one was on or under it at the time, thank God.”