CHARITY worker Jennifer Fox was stuck for eight hours in a lavatory.

The 50-year-old, from Sandford-on-Thames, tried everything possible to escape after the door jammed while she was in the loo at her office in Stone's Court, St Clements, on Monday.

The incident began at about 11.30am, when Mrs Fox's only colleague had just left for the day, locking the front door behind her. Mrs Fox had left her bag and mobile phone at her desk and the toilet had no windows or gap around the door.

Initial cries for help got no response, so she tried turning the extractor fan off so she could be heard more clearly. This also switched the light off, plunging the room into darkness. She then removed the cistern lid and began banging it on the side of the wall. When this failed to attract any attention, she used the zip on her trousers as a screwdriver to remove the door handle, but there was a metal bar across it and she was unable to free herself that way.

She said: "By this time, it was 5pm and the heating had gone off at 11 so I was freezing. I got undressed, wrapped myself in toilet paper and put my clothes back on.

"Then I sat on the cistern lid and started screaming for help through the extractor."

A passerby known only as Ali was walking down a lane at the back of the building, heard Mrs Fox's near-hysterical calls and went to get help. At the same time, her husband Thomas was on his way, after being told she had failed to arrive at Headington School to collect her two daughters Charlotte, 18 and Tamsin, ten. Having phoned around local hospitals, concerned she may have had an accident, he decided to look for his wife at her work place.

Mrs Fox said: "Ali was my hero - he was talking to me for about 45 minutes through the air vent while I was crying. Then my husband came and started shouting in too.

"The whole thing was very wacky."

Police turned up and used tools from the office to try to break the door down, but this failed, so they began to kick the door in. Mrs Fox was finally freed at about 7.15pm.

She said: "I was in a real state - I just came home, burst into tears and threw up.

"My daughter said I must have been bored in there for all that time but I just kept thinking of new strategies to get out of the loo because I knew no one would come to the office for a few days.

"I'm glad it's over, but I am a bit scared about going in there again."