A course on re-tiling roof's was dismissed as "shoddy" by delegates who attended it today.
The Instructor Lead course, which was held in the living room of 84 year old Margeret Blakelaw's Bungalow in Epsom was an impromptu affair after Dave Johnson from 'Johnson and Son Building and Repair Work', a local roofing company, convinced her that her roof was in such a bad state that not only did it need 'minor re-tiling' but it would help starving children in Africa if he could teach one or two of his mates the ropes while he patched it up.
Originally estimated to run for 'a couple of hours, at most an afternoon' with delegates paying fifty quid cash, the complete course continued for three and a half weeks and cost delegates just over fourteen thousand pounds each. Mrs Blakelaw's roof was originally retiled, then removed and replaced with asphalt, then had an extension built on the back, before being knocked down compltely and replaced with a prefabricated classroom in which the course was eventually completed.
Builders who attended the course - 'Advanced Slatework in PostWar Roofing' - denied that it was a cover for a course teaching them how to extort money from old ladies despite the course manual's opening chapter being on how to position a foot in a doorway so that it couldn't be closed and containing illustrations of Post Office Account Checkbooks commonly used by pensioners.