Our clutch of bizarre stories this week all come from October 1973, a time when men were men and women knew their place.

And if they didn’t know their place, they were certainly put in it by Mr Albert Rumfitt, Dean of the British College of Naturopathy and Osteopathy, who was extensively quoted in a front page story from October 6.

“Women should forget advice about burning their bras,” said the story, “and throw away their girdles and corsets instead.”

Women’s lib gone mad? Not quite... in fact, the reverse. The story continued: “Bared breasts may turn their husbands on – but the sight of bulging flesh in the wrong places can make their men impotent, a top osteopath said today.”

Mr Rumfitt was the appropriately-monikered top osteopath in question. He told graduates at his college: “It is time women stopped complaining about their husbands being impotent until they have recaptured their own health and charm.”

Girdles, he said, only masked the real problem: “A person unwilling or too weak-willed to get rid of superfluous fat.”

It would have been interesting to see how Mr Rumfitt fared with his theories against Judith Coates, 21, who we featured in the October 16 edition with the introduction: “Here’s a girl who is the equal of men in the male-dominated world of heavy lorry driving.”

Judith had passed her heavy goods vehicle class one exam, all the better to help in her job at the family farm and cattle-dealing business.

She wouldn’t have had any truck (ha ha) with men like Rumfitt. Judith said: “My boyfriend did not like me driving lorries at first, but he has come round to the idea.”

Heavy goods vehicles are the best way to transport cattle, it seems – they certainly don’t come off too well on the railways, if a small news item in the same day’s newspaper was anything to go by.

“Five cows were killed by a London to Bradford express in Wyke tunnel,” we reported. “The driver said he did not realise he had hit the cattle until he arrived at the Exchange Station and saw blood on the front of the engine. An inspection of the line was ordered and the cows were found.”

The cattle had apparently strayed from a farm at Norwood Green. Quite what they were doing in the tunnel is anyone’s guess.

And finally, on to a daring heist in which the raiders aimed to pocket themselves a bit of dough – but found they had bitten off more than they could chew.

A report from Bradford magistrates court on October 2 told how two youths broke into a bakery at Westgate Hill, Bradford. They wore overalls to disguise themselves as workers and one of them told the police: “We tried to get some bread from the vans.”

However, Mr Jack Clapham, defending solicitor, told the court: “When they were surrounded by men with spanners, crowbars and other things, they got rather frightened. They thought they were going to be beaten up.”

Both men were fined £20 and one was ordered to pay a further £10 for a breach of a conditional discharge.