This may sound like a saucy euphemism best delivered in a Kenneth Williams voice, but if you had a pink budgie, would you let someone get their hands on it for £300?

That was the burning question on January 14, 1963, from a month half a century ago that provides a rich bounty for our Bizarre Bradford column this week.

The pink budgie in question was the handiwork of budgerigar breeder Mr Benjamin Dunham, of West Bowling, who had bred the beast “by accident”.

A pink budgie was said by us to be “the ambition of breeders the world over”, and when news broke of the gaily-hued bird, a Bradford fancier immediately offered £300.

And Mr Dunham almost let it slip through his fingers. The budgie didn’t show its true colours until it began to moult its first layer of feathers, but before that the breeder had given it away. But the lady who received it brought it back because “she wanted a noisier bird”.

The Budgerigar Society said the bird was “unique” and they might put it on show “but it would have to be closely guarded”.

It appears that Mr Dunham kept hold of the bird despite the offer of £300 – which we agree might have been a bit too cheep for such a creature...

Another animal story, this one not so nice, from January 12. Thieves drove out to an isolated farm at Stanbury and loaded up with 183 mink worth £2,000. But police believed that the thieves might not have got away without having their fingers burned... or at least bitten.

We wrote: “Mink can be extremely vicious if they are not properly handled and the fact that one or two of the stolen stock have been recovered in the area since the raid suggest that the thieves may not have been used to the animals and may have been bitten as they took them from cages under an open shed at the farm.”

More thieves were at work in Bradford on January 11, though they chose a target less likely to fight back than a lorry-load of mink. Bradford magistrates heard the case of two young men, aged 16 and 17, who had been responsible for a burglary at a toilet goods compound in Ashfield.

They got away with a haul of 5,220 razor blades, but the interesting line to the story was the way they were caught – the sort of thing that you thought only happened in old Sherlock Holmes stories.

We wrote: “The imprint of a fancy ribbed pattern shoe sole led to the arrest of two Bradford youths,” adding: “The footprint was in thick dust on the top of some shelving where they had climbed over.”

It is to be hoped the detective who discovered the footprint did so with the aid of an outsized magnifying glass.

Finally, to show that not all youths were bad ’uns back in 1963, here’s the heartwarming tale of the North Wing Mission Youth Club, based at Otley Road, Bradford, who handed over 54 envelopes containing £19 15s to the Bradford branch of the Freedom from Hunger campaign.

Mr A K Sykes told the T&A that “the club had set a wonderful example and it should be a guide to other youth clubs”.

And how had the young folk raised this impressive amount? They’d gone without cigarettes to provide what we called in our headline “fag money” to the charity.

We wrote: “It was the idea of the club leader... just before Christmas that members should give up a packet of cigarettes and give the money to the campaign. There was a mixed reception to the suggestion at first, then it really caught on.”

Thankfully, those that didn’t smoke didn’t have to take up fags to help out – they abstained from sweets or biscuits instead.

  • If you have any memories of a story that might fit the Bizarre Bradford bill, drop us a line to the usual address, or e-mail david.barnett@telegraphand argus.co.uk.