When student pranksters dragged Ernie, a live billy goat, to the top of Merton College tower in Oxford, the college knew exactly what to do call in RSPCA inspector John Ambrose.

He recalls: "The billy goat had been taken up the 167 stone steps of a spiral staircase as a student publicity stunt.

"The first-year students had tied it up at the top and fed it on custard cream biscuits and water.

"The college clerk of works, Mr EW Godwin, alerted the RSPCA, but told me that he was definitely not going to bring the animal down himself, as it had big horns.

"It was quite something to take a goat up all those steps, but a lot more difficult to bring it down.

"If you walked behind it, it would pull you down at speed, but if you walked in front, it would try to push you down.

"I decided to walk down backwards to steady the goat.

"I was accompanied by the clerk of works and two other workmen and together we managed to bring the goat down to terra firma. The aged billy goat was unharmed and in good condition."

It is one of many incidents Mr Ambrose, who now lives in London, describes in a book about his varied life as an RSPCA inspector.

He moved to Oxfordshire after working in Devon and Cornwall, and became the first resident RSPCA inspector to cover Banbury Market, then the biggest in the country.

He then spent seven years in Oxford, before taking up his final post in London.