There are plenty of theatre gags around in which a thief holds up a bank, not with a revolver but a banana, or slapstick jokes of a similar theme.
This time in Italy though, we’re not in a theatre but a post office, and the fruit of choice is a coconut.
In the post office at Via dei Narcisi in Prenestino, Rome, a 34 year-old Roman man stood in the queue like anyone else and then, on reaching the window, presented a bag and a note saying “Give me the money…I have a grenade and we’ll all be blown up…don’t create a scene.
” With the robbery done, the man left with the money.
The following day, the robber tried the same strategy in the post office in via Collatina, but with no result.
And so he decided to return to the first post office in Via dei Narcisi, where he had had such success.
Only that this time around he found the police ready to arrest him and the grenade tunred out to be an innocent coconut, modified to look like a leathal weapon.