There’s a mouse about this (court) house … and has it got news for you!

In early June, Grimsby Live introduced Court Mouse to their Facebook followers, bringing a new dimension to traditional court reporting.

While Grimsby’s court reporter Mark Naylor concentrates on the cases, Mouse shines a light into some of those other areas of day-to-day life in and around our local Magistrates and Crown courts.

The Mouse has rapidly built up a loyal following of more than 300 in his own Facebook Group and, when he remembers to post the odd court case, Grimsby Live has seen the benefits in audience reach. Not that the rodent cares a jot.

But Court Mouse can tell you the rest….

I’ve been scurrying and scuttling around the corridors of courts in Grimsby for many years, ever since the days when my fur was completely brown with not a trace of white.

I’ve even managed to sneak into solicitors’ briefcases and hide there for action-packed mouse-on-tour trips to Hull Crown Court and Sheffield Crown Court.

Hardly anyone sees me lurking around the dusty corridors of the courts and I have a great view from my hiding place under the courtroom chairs of what is going on.

By secretly earwigging on conversations, I reckon I know a lot more tittle tattle, gossip and inside information than that bungling halfwit of a Court Reporter.

The hopeless dunderhead spends all his time sitting cross-legged, scrawling silly symbols and shapes in his notebook and then wandering aimlessly about trying to smarm around solicitors and ushers.

That’s why he keeps missing what is really going on. I’m the one who hears and sees everything.

This is why the powers-that-be have rightly sidelined him and have asked me to give people a proper insight into what happens in the court corridors.

Those nice chaps at Grimsby Live have set me up with my own Grimsby Court Mouse page on Facebook.

I don’t understand anything about it, all I have to do is scamper around like I have always done, securing my next lump of cheese (and a few chocolate biscuits, salt-and-vinegar crisps and the odd sponge finger). If writing this drivel keeps the supplies coming in, that’s all I’m bothered about.

But the Facebook readers seem to have taken to me, which is more than can be said for the so-called Court Reporter in his ill-fitting suit.

Everyone hates him and all he ever gets is defendants ringing him up and accusing him of “writing total sh**” and “telling lies” (I’m totally with them on this).

But, in contrast, I’m getting plenty of requests to join my fledgling group and a surprising number of fan messages.

Most of the compliments are from women, surprisingly enough, again a big contrast with that oaf of a Court Reporter.

One woman seems particularly taken with me. She must be easily pleased because she wrote the other day: “I absolutely love reading about this little mouse. It makes my day.”

Another woman even offered to post some cheese to me at my address: Mr C. Mouse, The Mousehole, Corridor 2, The Courthouse, Grimsby (further donations still welcome, however small).

Among the group members are several magistrates, ushers, a senior Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor and a probation officer.

Ironically, there was a very real attempt to wipe me off the face of the earth a couple of days ago.

I suspect a couple of known humourless jobsworths of orchestrating it and putting the boot in but I managed to flee to freedom with help of a couple of human chums in the Grimsby Live office who muttered something about ‘bloody Facebook’ before setting me up on a new digital mousehole.

Now I’m just trying to keep one step ahead of the pest controllers and dodge those extra mousetraps they have laid at the courts.

But as long as my new female admirers keep promising to send me cheese, I’ll survive for a bit longer, I hope.