‘Artful Codger’ avoids time in prison

A PENSIONER who fooled the art world for years by selling fake antiques his son had “knocked up” in his garden shed avoided a jail sentence yesterday.

Wheelchair user George Greenhalgh, 84 — dubbed the “artful codger” — was given a two-year suspended jail sentence at Bolton Crown Court.

Greenhalgh would turn up in his wheelchair at art houses and museums claiming to have found or inherited the objects.