PROF Terry Willis, 71, raced to the rescue when he spotted a canoeist stuck up a bush without a paddle.

The stricken paddler had run into trouble on the swollen River Cherwell, crashing into a fence and bushes on the bank.

But Prof Willis paid a high price for his Good Samaritan act - he ended up swapping his trousers for the crashed boat.

Now he has asked the Oxford Mail to come to his rescue by finding the mystery canoeist, who has disappeared without trace.

The retired Oxford University Physics professor first saw the trapped canoeist from the bottom of his garden at Lonsdale Road, Summertown, Oxford.

He rushed to get a rope and a hook and pulled the young man, aged in his twenties, to safety. But that is when things began to go from bad to worse for the kind-hearted professor.

First he discovered four police divers and an angry ambulance crew outside his door, called by anxious passers-by. The canoeist from Switzerland was given a stern ticking off for taking to the water in dangerous conditions.

Feeling sorry for the Swiss canoeist, Prof Willis made him tea and offered the damp shame-faced boatman clothes. He even helped the young man look for his paddle before agreeing to keep his strange looking boat safe in his boat house until his return.

That was all on Easter Saturday. Nearly five weeks later the professor still has the boat, but is minus his trousers, with his hopes of seeing the foreign canoeist sinking fast.

Prof Willis said: "I've heard nothing. The young man, who said he was from Oxford Brookes University, has not bothered to come back.

"I still have the boat, which is in fact an eights boat cut in half and boarded up at one end. It is all a bit embarrassing. I gave him the trousers because he was soaked through. It would be nice if he could return them."

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