Irn-Bru man's charity bottle store is raided

The retired firefighter, who over many years has collected thousands of glass Barrs' soft drink bottles to donate the deposits to charities, was unloading his latest crateloads in his garage in Craigieburn Road on Thursday afternoon.

Three teenagers started talking to him and Jimmy explained his work, saying that the deposits helped good causes such as Strathcarron

Hospice and Yorkhill Hospital. Soon afterwards they started throwing stones at him. After Jimmy went inside he got a phone call to say the delinquents were stealing crates.

The search was on and eventually the bottles were recovered - they had been stashed under an empty house as presumably the thieves planned to wait until nightfall to recover their loot and trade it in for the deposits.

"It wouldn't have done them any good anyway," said Jimmy. "Shopkeepers round here know not to take in a whole crate of bottles as they've probably been stolen from me."

Jimmy is undeterred by this incident and continues to collect bottles for good causes.

His remarkable bottle collection drive led to Jimmy being last year named a community champion by Supercounty, the Lanarkshire civic pride campaign. Over the years he has raised some 108,000 for good causes, having claimed the deposits on more than 2.5 million empties!

However with the recent spate of business closures Jimmy has lost a few of his best supporters and is keen to hear from anyone who regularly collects large numbers of bottles they'd like to donate - contact this newspaper for further details.