When a gunman strode into a post office and demanded cash, he came up against an adversary he couldn't beat - customer Mavis Fazackerley. DAVID HIGGERSON met the unlikely heroine.

MAVIS Fazackerley can remember the events of Saturday, July 29, 1995 as if it was yesterday.

After all, it isn't all that often you single-handedly foil an armed raid on a post office.

But as much as people have heaped praise on the plucky 64-year-old for her heroism on that day, which resulted in three men going to prison, Mavis still refuses to see what she did as anything special.

In fact, she thinks it was her now-deceased mother Bertha who inspired her to do what she did.

"My mother always taught me to help other people wherever I could and that in return they would always do the same back.

"Times and society may have changed so that isn't the case any more, but it is something which has stuck with me ever since," said Mavis, who has lived in Blackburn all her life.

Mavis had gone into the Preston New Road post office on that fateful Saturday morning to collect her mother's pension.

"I knew the people in there quite well," she said.

"I was at one counter and a man was at the next counter.

After a little while a man in a balaclava came in, toting a gun.

"At first I thought it was hoax, a strippergram or something, but I saw the look on the faces of the people behind the counter and went over to this man and told him not to be so stupid. I think I must have thought it was a hoax at that point.

"I certainly don't consider what I did to be brave."

At that point, the armed man grabbed hold of the other customer and shoved the gun into the side of his neck. Still Mavis, standing tall at 5ft 1ins, didn't give up.

"I tried to get the gun off him but he was a lot taller than me so I just went for his balaclava.

"I wasn't going to give up, despite him threatening me.

"He had really annoyed me."

The distraction gave the post office staff the chance to hit silent panic buttons which alerted police.

The kerfuffle also proved to be too much for the disguised gunman who, in Mavis's words, "turned tail and fled" before the police arrived.

"The other customer was visibly upset," remembers Mavis.

"We made sure he sat down because he was shaken."

It only transpired later that that customer was part of a gang of three, all in on the robbery.

"It never crossed my mind at the time," said Mavis.

"The detective who took my statement kept asking me about him but I didn't think there was anything odd about him until I went home and saw him hanging around outside the post office. I asked him what he was doing but he wouldn't tell me so I insisted he went home."

Mavis made a point of being in court to see them being sentenced.

In December 1995, the customer got three years, the gunman six.

"I would have let it all be forgotten," said Mavis. "I would like to think that anyone would do the same." The police had different ideas, however.

They heaped bravery awards on her, one of which now hangs on the wall of her living room.

For most of her life Mavis had worked as an accountant and retired in 1998.

You can now find her working voluntarily for the police.

Mavis, who attended St Barnabas Primary School and the old Blackburn Girls' High, said: "I saw Superintendent Eddie Walsh one lunchtime in the shopping centre and he asked what I was up to.

"I told him I was about to retire and he asked if I would be interested in doing voluntary work for the police.

"I said yes.

"One of the inspectors called me and more or less ever since I have spent Mondays working in the property office, which stores evidence and things like that.

"I just feel it is something I can do to help others.

My mother always taught me to help other people wherever possible.

"Whether everyone still has that opinion I don't know, but it has stood me in good stead." Mavis also does the books for Age Concern in Blackburn and takes part in one of their outreach schemes, which involves visiting older, often housebound, pensioners.

Mavis's heroism has been well documented on national and local television.

The last programme she took part in tried to prove that community spirit is still alive.

While Mavis was more than happy to take part, she got a surprise when she watched the programme -- and saw they had interviewed the armed robber.

"He was speaking about how he was determined to go straight and look after his family," remembered Mavis.

"I hope he does.

"I hope he gets his life together," she mused.

"Although he did mention that when he planned the robbery he never expected to be stopped by a little old lady, which annoyed me, because I didn't think of myself as old then!"

But does she have any regrets about what she did?

"Only that I didn't manage to keep hold of him until the police arrived," she jokes.