OWNERS of a Devizes record shop who were horrified to find one of their windows had been smashed by a late night reveller have forgiven the vandal after he found sorry wasn’t the hardest word.

Jacki Harvey and Pete Bennett, who run Vinyl Realm, were shocked to be told their historic premises in Long Street had been vandalised in a ‘mindless act of drunken criminal damage.’ Jacki said: “There were no words to describe his actions. No words.”

In addition to the broken panes of glass a guitar on display in the window was also damaged.

But on the Monday after the drunken rampage which started after he was asked to leave The Lamb pub the man, in his 20s, rang Jacki to apologise and said he had no memory of what had happened.

Jacki said: “I respect him for coming forward and apologising. He said it was completely out of character. He had used his elbow to break the glass and when told what had happened realised it was him as his arm was hurt.

“He has now offered to pay for the damage and has apologised to us and the people at The Lamb.

“We were all young once and most of us if we are honest did things that we perhaps shouldn’t have and we perhaps got a bit drunker than we should have. We hope this is a lesson learned as it was learned the hard way.”

The damage to the shop was caused at around 11.30pm on Saturday September 19 and Jacki was heartened by the way people showed their support late at night.

She said: “We want to say a big thank you to the many local residents who witnessed said person and alerted us to this mindless act of drunken criminal damage.”

She also thanked two men from The Greyhound turned out during the early hours of Sunday to board up the window.

She said: “We heard that one of them came out in their underwear They are both stars and we can’t thank you enough.”

She pointed out that the culprit had made life difficult for a number of people.

She said: “He inconvenienced in the region of 10 people including ourselves, who spent almost an entire Sunday clearing up and sorting out the mess with the police, witnesses, our landlord, the insurance company and glaziers.”

Wiltshire police are still investigating. The vandalism came at a particularly bad time for the shopkeepers as they are just about to move into new premises in the centre of the town. They will open at 59 Northgate Street at 10am today. (Thursday, October 1)

Jacki said: “It was very annoying that we lost the whole of the Sunday speaking to police and clearing up afterwards when we should have been concentrating on the new place.”

The shop is having special reusable cotton bags created and will be giving out vouchers at the launch. A signing is also planned for Saturday from 1pm to 3pm with Will Lawton. He will be launching his album Abbey House Sessions recorded at Abbey House in Malmesbury with his band The Alchemists.