Sentence: 10 weeks imprisonment suspended for 24 months, 200 hours unpaid work, £85 court costs, and a five-year criminal behaviour order
Richard Cove, of Boundary Road, Worthing, made persistent nuisance calls to police on 101 between June 2023 and September 2024, pretending to be an elderly woman named 'Helen Cheeseman' to report trivial matters and ask call handlers personal questions about the size of their feet or to say phrases like 'cheesy feet' or 'smelly feet'. He made up to 60 calls in a single day from a withheld number, wasting more than three hours of police time and targeting female officers in departments dealing with serious offences. This behaviour was linked to his foot fetish, and he had previously been convicted of similar nuisance calls to 111.