BEMUSING times at the Guildhall this week, after the city’s Labour leadership gained a new councillor without having to fight any election, knock on unwelcoming doors or wait nervously in a gloomy chamber for the voters’ verdict.

Councillor Jabba Riaz decided to throw off his old Conservative robes and switch allegiance to Labour, almost like an April Fools’ Day joke, except it wasn’t a joke.

Just one, five-minute glance through our archives throws up examples of the ‘old’ Coun Riaz, a True Blue Tory who over the last three years has been only too happy to advocate Conservative thinking, criticise and insult the opposition, and back group leader Coun Simon Geraghty on every step of his pursuit of his cause.

In recent months he’s suggested a Labour politician should resign, lambasted Labour for “delaying” the swimming pool proposals, criticised Labour for closing Nunnery Wood Sports Centre on Fridays and, pause for breath on this one, told Worcester News readers how the Liberal Democrat and Green parties were “drinking with the devil” by allowing Labour to take control of the council back in May.

Hours after his ‘new’ decision, which he said was due to him becoming fed up with David Cameron’s “disastrous” policies on Monday, Tory HQ detailed how he tried to switch to a safer council seat for next year’s elections, from his current Cathedral ward to Battenhall, but lost out in the selection process just last week.

Coun Riaz, of course, insists he’s felt uneasy about national Tory policies for a year and would “probably” have quit anyway, even if he was selected for Battenhall.

But The Source has an alternative explanation for all this, which is frankly more believable than some of the tosh I’ve heard this week. Jabba’s been kidnapped.

You see this step-change is so incredible, so downright weird, someone must have locked our well-heeled Tory in their attic in the Cathedral ward, and recruited an internationally-renowned look-a-like firm to send down the ‘new’ Coun Riaz, complete with a Gordon Brown autobiography.

The days are passing by and I’m getting increasingly worried about the real Coun Riaz’s welfare.

If any reader, anywhere at all, is passing the streets of Cathedral and hears screams from an upstairs window, don’t delay, call the police!