Hydrangea rage granny gets community order (From This Is Local London)

Foul-mouthed Cheam granny gets six month community order over hydrangea rage

2:24pm Wednesday 20th June 2012 in Bizarre By James Pepper

Margaret Perry, 87, received a community order

Sutton's rudest granny has escaped with a community order after admitting a bout of hydrangea rage got the better of her.

Margaret Perry, 87, unleashed a flurry of racial insults towards her neighbour, who had dared to trim her hydrangea plant on Gainsborough Road, Cheam.

Neighbour Brian Kelly told police the hydrangea was so overgrown it was taking the sunlight away from his tomato plant so he had decided to cut it.

But Perry lost it when she saw her Irish neighbour in her garden.

Perry told Mr Kelly he could not speak "proper English" and to go back to his own country before shouting "balls up your a**e" at him.

By talking to her neighbour, Perry breached a restraining order which had been imposed following a neighbourhood dispute in April last year when she stole her neighbour Brian Kelly's pot plant.

Perry pleaded guilty in March, but since then, the court heard how she had thrown a toilet roll into next door's garden.

On Wednesday (June 20) the octogenarian was given a six month community order at Croydon Crown Court for breaching the restraining order last August and breaching an earlier conditional discharge.

During a difficult morning, the court took the unorthodox stance of allowing Perry to stand next to the prosecutor Terry Curtis, as she is hard of hearing.

Mr Curtis told magistrates: "The victims, who are elderly themselves, feel Mrs Perry is motivated in her harassment by racial prejudice."

Sentencing Perry to a six-month community order and ordering the former Greater London Council employee to pay £75 in costs, chief magistrate Keith Sillitoe, said: "We have dealt with you as leniently as we can Mrs Perry. You must not contact them again or you will find yourself back in here."

When asked if she had anything to say, Perry told Mr Sillitoe: "This is all bloody ridiculous, it is a waste of my time, and a waste of yours."