CORONATION Street fan Betty Stapleton told police that she was mugged by a lookalike of the TV soap's Les Battersby.

Within three hours they arrested Neil Dixon, 33, on the graphic description of widow Betty, 74, said Jamie Hill, prosecuting.

He added: "The officers visualised the character and used local knowledge - and she was spot-on."

Betty ran after Dixon but gave up the chase when a friend warned her off. She recovered with a cup of tea and a brandy.

She said yesterday: "He asked me for change for the phone and I thought how much he looked like Les Battersby. It was such a shock when he snatched my purse, but my reaction was to get it back."

Teesside Crown Court heard that Dixon immediately confessed: "It was me".

He took police behind an Indian restaurant in Guisborough where he had dumped her purse, which he had emptied of £3 to buy drugs.

He lost his job as a British Steel trainee engineer after a motorcycle crash and he had a £50-a-day heroin habit, said Peter Makepeace, defending. Dixon saw prison as his only hope of quitting.

Dixon, of Rectory Lane, Guisborough, who had been sleeping behind the restaurant on a dumped mattress, was jailed for two and a half years. He pleaded guilty to the robbery on November 1 last year.

Judge John Walford told him: "These offences are happening all too often. Old people are targeted by heroin users and the effect on them is extreme.