TWO community bobbies with a combined age of 111 chased down and caught a banned driver on an off-road motorbike – on their bicycles.

Police Community Support Officers (PCSO) George Bould and Keith Mellor pedalled furiously after jobless Adrian Hall, who had been riding his Honda CR80 on fields.

They chased the father-of-one along a number of streets in Dresden for 10 minutes before finally catching him.

Now Hall has been jailed for 24 weeks after admitting driving while disqualified and without insurance.

The 37-year-old has 30 previous convictions for disqualified driving and was already banned from the roads until March 2014.

PCSO Bould, who is 62, and has been with Staffordshire Police for five years, said: "It was like the Tour de France. We had to pedal fast, because he was on quite a powerful motorbike.

"We knew we had to catch him so we split up but remained in radio contact while we were chasing him, and when I reached Wharfedale Walk, Keith had caught up with him."

PCSO Mellor, aged 49, who had only been in the job for six months when he caught Hall on August 28, said: "We chased him quite a way. It must have been about 10 minutes, but it seemed a lot longer.

"Both George and I are pretty good on our bikes so it wasn't too much of a problem to keep up with him.

"Fortunately he came out in my path and then George arrived seconds later and we called for back up."

North Staffordshire Magistrates heard yesterday how Hall, of Kildare Street, Dresden, had intended to sell the bike and had taken it to fields off Goms Mill Road for a test ride.

But the officers chased Hall, who is training to become a forklift truck driver, when he rode off the fields on to Thackeray Drive without a helmet.

Sandra Whitehurst, prosecuting, said: "He said he was driving the bike because it was heavy. He said, 'I just decided to ride it. I know it was really stupid'."

The court heard Hall had ridden the bike after the gears had got stuck.

Simon Dykes, defending, said: "At the time he felt there was no other option and that was a consequence of his poor thinking skills."