Essex pub hit by fruit machine mass hysteria

The community of a small Essex village is tonight in shock after a bungling fruit machine rental company delivered a new machine to a local pub on a SATURDAY AFTERNOON when the hostelry was PACKED with DRUNKEN PUNTERS flush with DISPOSABLE INCOME.

The incident took place at around 2pm on Saturday at the Waggon & Horses, Mistley, which has gained some fame as the spiritual home of Yeast Logic. Small children and even decorated war veterans were trampled in the stampede to be the first to insert coinage into the flashing box, provocatively named "Hell's Bells".

Veteran pokie addict Jamie "Can I have a fiver in change please?" Cambridge admitted: "It all got a bit out of hand, I'm afraid. This was the most exciting thing that has happened around here since someone turned all the garden furniture upside down a couple of months back. I suppose it's a bit like mass hysteria. You sort of get sucked in."

Things could, however, have been a lot worse were it not for the presence of world fruit machine anecdote champions Paul "Six Nudges" Bowers and Mark "It was about to pay out" Alden. The pair — who in January retained their title in a nailbiting showdown at The Fighting Dog and Pikey in Dagenham — were able to use minor celebrity status to throw a defensive cordon around the fruitie and so avert a disaster.

The two men then treated the calmed crowd to an anecdotal masterclass, simultaneously feeding a week's wages into the voracious equipment while recounting a recent epic gambling session at a working men's club in Harwich. Staff took the opportunity to dress several minor injuries.

Asked what he thought of "Hell's Bells", Paul Bowers expressed cautious enthusiasm: "Well, I was a tenner up when I got caught on the 'Gates of Hades' ultranudge feature. You've got to snatch your cash from the Jaws of Cerberus, but I reckon it'll take me another 50 quid or so before I get the hang of that. The 'Purgatory Superpunt' double-or-eternal-damnation is a nice touch, though."

Mark Alden, taking a moment from advising a group of rapt teenagers on how best to hyperspin around Old Nick's Trident while working up the Mephistophelean Tree of Death towards a £5 resurrection bonus, told The Rockall Times: "Fuc*kin' hell, the machine has got a slot for notes so you don't have to go to the bar and ask for change. How cool is that? I've only seen that in Vegas when I took the 'Dean Martin' jackpot on one the 'Memories are Made of This' slots. Thing is, some old boy had been playing for seventeen hours and when he get up to take a piss, I just bunged in a buck and bingo! Just last week I was in the kebab shop down town and some kid had pumped in seventy notes but then his doner was ready so I whacked in a nugget..."

Meanwhile, the company which owns the machine has admitted that it "blundered" by delivering the fruit machine in broad daylight. "In future, we'll install all new machines at seven o'clock on a Monday morning," one visibly-shaken technician told us. "That way, punters can be gradually introduced to the novelty without the infectious excitement getting completely out of hand."