GREAT-grandad Ernie Hanratty fought off a mugger a quarter of his age after he snatched his favourite newspaper.
Ernie, 85, was walking home from the shops when Daniel Rose, 21, demanded: “Give me £20 and I’ll go.”
Tough Ernie, a former amateur boxer, replied: “You’ll bloody go but you’ll not be getting £20.”
Drug-crazed Rose grabbed him but Ernie fought back before the mugger seized his bag containing his Sun newspaper and fled.
Rose was arrested two days later after leaving DNA.
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Ex-removal man Ernie said: “I wish I was 20 years younger as he’d have been lying on the deck.
“There was no way the bugger was getting away with any money, but he cost me two copies of The Sun.
"He was a pale, pasty lad and he looked older than 21 but I suppose that must be the drugs.
"When I let go of his wrist he couldn't get away fast enough."
Widower Ernie, of Stanley, Co Durham, was making his morning walk to the shop to buy the two copies, one for him and one for his neighbour, when forklift truck driver Rose attacked him last month.
An hour earlier the mugger had raided the home of a woman in her 70s.
Rose, of Stanley, sobbed as he admitted robbery and burglary at Teesside crown court. He got two-and-a-half years’ jail.
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