WHEN backpacker Nikki Hollis went missing in Stoke-on-Trent, friend Tom Logan knew he had to save her. Here is the moving story of how he finally brought her home.
When I heard Nikki was missing in Stoke I immediately assumed she was dead – mauled by dangerous dogs on a chav estate or literally bored to death by tedious accounts of the pottery industry.
I’d known her at school, and having been to Stoke-on-Trent once when I got lost on the way to Liverpool I knew I couldn’t leave her in a cursed wasteland of grotty pubs, ersatz Chinese takeaways and primitive tracksuited humans known as ‘Stokies’.
I took the first National Express coach to Hanley bus station and immediately began my search. At first I assumed the incessant shouts of ‘Ay up duck!’ were threats, but it turned out to be obscure local dialect meaning: ‘Good day, sir or madam, would you like me to tell you about Royal Doulton for the billionth f**king time?’
Finally I saw a young woman with a large backpack staring at a statue of 1930s footballer Sir Stanley Matthews. My heart leapt – she looked pale and incredibly bored but it was unmistakably Nikki.
At first she was scared, but slowly she began to recognise me. It emerged that she’d only intended to have a quick look round, but had been traumatised by the complete lack of cultural activity except for a ‘Spitfire museum’ containing just one Spitfire and notorious megastar twat Robbie Williams being born there.
Worse, she’d been subsisting on the local rubbery pancakes known as ‘Staffordshire oatcakes’ and was already showing signs of obesity and furred arteries from all the bacon and melted cheese.
Knowing there wasn’t a second to waste, I got Nikki on the next train south, and I can report that, after a full medical check by her doctor, she is safely back at her parents’ home in Surrey. People are calling me a hero, but I only did what anyone who’s been to the Potteries would do.
Nikki is likely to make a full physical recovery, but the mental scars will take longer to heal. She’s still having nightmares that make her wake up screaming in the night, but that’s to be expected when you’ve spent three whole days in Stoke.
