Last week I told you about my new favorite superhero, portly British Batman, who fights crime by bursting into rooms and loudly demanding to know “Oi, wot’s aw dis den?” The world learned of his existence when he dropped off a burglary suspect at a police station in northern England last week and vanished without a trace. WHO IS THIS MASKED MAN? It turns out, he’s a 39-year-old delivery b– er, man, for a Chinese restaurant.
Stan Warby, 39, reportedly said he had been at a football match dressed as the superhero when his friend called him asking for help in handing himself in to officers.
He accompanied Danny Frayne to Bradford police station as a favour, after returning from Bradford City’s cup final clash against Swansea at London’s Wembley Stadium on February 25.
Mr Warby was dressed head to toe as the comic book hero when he anonymously took his 27-year-old friend at Trafalgar House police station in the early hours of the morning.
He told the Daily Telegraph: “It was a joke at the end of the day, and Danny wanted to go to the police station.
“I had spoken to Danny during the week and tried to knock some sense into him.
“It was getting on my nerves having police round all the time asking for him or his whereabouts.
“Danny’s a good friend of mine and I’ve known him for 15 years or so. Who knows if I’ll be doing some more crime-fighting in the future?”
So British Batman is a good-hearted, 39-year-old football fanatic who works at a Chinese takeaway, tries to get his friends to be better people, and dresses like Batman for a laugh? And their names are Stan Warby and Danny Frayne? I guess the obvious question here is… is this a Simon Pegg/Nick Frost buddy comedy?
He added that he had attracted some “strange looks”.
Police in West Yorkshire said the mystery caped crusader told them: “I’ve caught this one for you.”
Officers added that he “then promptly vanished into the night to fight crime and the fear of crime in Bradford”.
Frayne had been wanted in connection with a number of alleged offences.
He was later charged with handling stolen goods and fraud-related offences, and will appear before magistrates on Friday.
The mystery was announced by the neighbourhood police team for the Buttershaw area of Bradford on their Facebook page.
They said: “Last week we had a very strange occurrence at the police station when a male wanted for an offence on our area was ‘escorted’ into our helpdesk at Trafalgar House by Batman.
One of the Police Community Support Officers said in another post that they had been looking for the man but “Ultimately Batman beat us to the punch… Until next time, Batman, until next time!!!”
They also joked that Robin must have been outside keeping the Batmobile running. [YorkshireEveningPost]
In the US, I guarantee both Batman and his buddy would’ve gotten tazed. But not in England, which is apparently Mayberry. What stolen property had he been handling? A pie that the Widow Fitzsmithins had left to cool? I like to imagine that in court, the powder-wigged judge had him officially declared “a cheeky c*nt” and sentenced him to buy the next pint.