A SHODDY workman - nick-named "the fiddler on the roof" for his penchant for roofing rip offs - has been given an ASBO to protect the public from his botched repair jobs.

James Bowes is now banned by law from plying his trade after ripping off pensioners.

Bowes pressured his elderly victims into having roof tiles fixed for supposedly budget prices.

But he carried out sub-standard jobs and charged his vulnerable customers up to £1,000 more than the value of his work. He even threatened one woman when she became suspicious and refused payment.

Now he is facing jail and has been banned from working as a roofer until further notice after JPs gave him an interim anti-social behaviour order.

Dave O'Brien, head of Newcastle trading standards and licensing, said: "This order should serve to protect the consumers Bowes preyed on illegally."

Bowes, 46, of Newcastle, traded under the name of Fenham Roofing and targeted people in the city's West End.

Newcastle City Council trading standards officers and police acted after receiving a complaint from a 52-year-old retired woman, living in Chapel House, Newcastle.

Bowes had been working on a neighbour's house and approached the woman to say she needed tiles re-pointed and re-bedded, the chimney stack re-pointed and tiles replaced.

He offered her a supposedly 'discount' rate of £420 and said the work would be done within 45 minutes. But when the customer struggled to contact Bowes, she got suspicious and cancelled her cheque.

On July 2 last year, a fuming Bowes returned to the house and threatened to smash up the work he had done if he was not paid. Police were called and warned him not to contact the woman again.

Two weeks later, Bowes' business partner went to the house with the original cheque and demanded a new one but the woman called trading standards officers.

They probed the allegations and found only one roof tile had been replaced and much of the work had not been carried out as promised.

The job should only have cost £140 - three times less than Bowes had charged.

The matter was passed on to Northumbria Police who arrested him.

Another complaint to trading standards came from an 84-year-old man living in a bungalow in Westerhope, Newcastle.

He had been working in his garden when Bowes approached him and warned there were tiles missing on his roof.

The pensioner agreed to have the work done and was charged a total of £1,220.

But when trading standards investigators sent a surveyor to inspect the work, they discovered a catalogue of errors. Some of the tiles did not need replacing in the first place and Bowes had damaged other parts of the roof himself while working. It was estimated the total cost of the job should only have been £220 - £1,000 less than Bowes charged.

He was hauled before magistrates in Newcastle and admitted two charges of deception and one of attempting to obtain property by deception.

Bowes' reputation for shoddy work and high-pressure sales techniques earned him the nickname 'fiddler on the roof'.

And in the first move of its kind, trading standards applied for an Asbo to ban him from working.

An interim order was granted while pre-sentence reports were being prepared and Bowes could be slapped with a full Asbo when he re-appears in June.

* As part of its Doorstoppers campaign, The Northern Echo is pressing for legislation against door-to-door callers.