Mario Lanza artist strikes again

A notorious artist who haunts pubs across Staffordshire and the Black Country with drawings of opera singer Mario Lanza has struck again.

The mystery figure, who draws the same cartoon image of Lanza on beermats and includes a fact or a quote, has left his mark at Woody's Music Bar, in Market Street, Hednesford.

Lanza, who died in 1959, was a US tenor and Hollywood movie star of the late 1940s and the 1950s. Beermat drawings have been turning up across the region ever since although this is thought to be the first in Hednesford.

Bar owner Andy Wood said the secret artist left behind four beermats and a handmade postcard left on a sink in the gents toilet.

Mr Wood said if he looked at CCTV footage he might be able to pinpoint who the artist is, but he has decided he would rather not look and let the legend live on. He said: "It's been going on around 50 years and I think it's quite poetic, why would I want to ruin it all now?"