Two streakers providing an unexpected shock for Saturday shoppers in the Market Square.

Two students and a policeman were the competitors in one of the most bizarre quarter-mile races ever staged in Burnley. As a new craze streaks across Great Britain, two Burnley students decided to join in. At one point any visiting Everton supporter would have been forgiven for mistaking the Market Square for Turf Moor. It was shortly before three o'clock when a crowd started to gather in the square, most of them on the upper level, hoping to catch a glimpse of the streakers.

Faces were beginning to drop and hopes to fade when two figures emerged from the gent's toilet near the ground floor entrance to the Broadsword Inn. And then the chase was on. A policeman who had noticed the crowd gathering earlier had stayed in the vicinity. The two streakers had gone less than 100 yards when the officer joined in the run. The students crossed the crowded Market Square to cheers, screams and applause from the onlookers. They then went down the ramp into the car park and on in the direction of the Army Careers Information Office. The chase ended in a small derelict building opposite the information office, and the streakers quickly replaced the cloths that they had carried under their arms. The chase was interrupted for a brief moment when one of the streakers dropped a bunch of keys, which the ever helpful policeman stopped to pick up. The whole event, from the start to when they were taken away by the police, lasted less than five minutes.

A police sergeant who arrived when the excitement was over commented, "Well it beats keeping the peace any day." The last word comes from a young child who, when the cheering started, asked his mother, "Is it football, Mummy?" To which she replied, "Yes dear, it's football."