THE daughter of film legend Peter Sellers starred in a drama all of her own when she went to a teddy bear sale.

For what Sarah Sellers saw at the sale in London's Kensington led to police tracing a burglar who had stolen £13,000-worth of collectible teddies from Bear-on-the-Wold in Stow.

When she went to the teddy fair, Ms Sellers had already unwittingly bought nearly 100 of the stolen bears from a trade contact and was busy selling them on the internet.

She runs an on-line teddy auction company and thought she was selling stock from a company which had gone bust.

However she realised that all was not what it seemed when she went to the fair at Kensington Town Hall on the 1999 August bank holiday.

She saw a stall being run by the Bear-on-the-Wold, a shock because Ms Sellers knew that the bears she was selling were from the Sheep Street shop, which she had understood had gone out of business.

In fact, the owners, Eileen and Eric Evers, were still operating and had a stall.

Ms Sellers said: "I was in complete shock when I found out who they were.

"I went home, spoke to a friend of mine who is a solicitor, then spoke to my own solicitor.

"I rang the shop and asked them what they wanted me to do, then I rang the local police. I had acted completely in good faith. When I was selling the bears on the internet, they all had their identity numbers.

"I was totally amazed at the prices they were reaching.

" If the Evers had been on-line at the sale, they would have seen they were their bears." Ms Sellers was horrified to think she might have been innocently caught up in the scam.

"I did what I could as soon as I could after I found out," she said. "I have to be very careful because of who my father was."

Mr Evers said: "Miss Sellers told us she thought we had gone bust. We told her we hadn't gone bust but we'd been burgled."

The affair ended on Tuesday, at Gloucester Crown Court with serial burglar Andrew Tanner, aged 41, escaping jail.

Mr David Martin, prosecuting, said that after the burglary Gloucestershire police took samples of fibres left behind.

They contained wool which came from a sweater found at Tanner's Bournemouth home.

The evidence from Ms Sellers provided the missing link, enabling police to arrest Tanner who admitted burgling the shop on June 26, 1999.

The Evers's daughter Mrs Jane Galbraith had become suspicious the night before when two men came into the store asking about the prices of bears.

When the break-in was discovered, she recalled the pair and picked Tanner out at an identification parade.

Tanner, of Kings Park Road, escaped jail, even though he has previous convictions for burglary and had refused to name his accomplice in the teddy raid.

Frank Abbotts, defending, said: "He now has a stable job as a bar manager.

"Putting him in jail with the down-and-outs and drug addicts won't help him."

Judge Gabriel Hutton ordered Tanner to complete 100 hours' community service work and placed him on probation for two years.