The Newark Advertiser is hoping to identify a man who attacked a mentally ill man in his home before robbing him, by running CCTV footage on its website.

Police have provided the Advertiser with 90 seconds of police surveillance film to be used on the website, together with a still for the newspaper's front page.

Police are trying to identify the man who befriended a mentally ill man in the town and got him to buy him food and drink for him before going back to his flat where he attacked him and stole his wallet.

It is hoped video footage of the pair in a KFC restaurant shortly before the attack will help solve the crime.

The police provided the Advertiser with a photo from the footage, and when the paper's editor, Harry Whitehouse, suggested running the full 90 seconds of footage on the paper's website, they were only too happy to help.

Harry said: "The police provided the footage and we digitised it. This is the first time that we have done this and I'm not aware of it having been done before anywhere else. It just seemed the obvious thing to do.

"Obviously CCTV footage is not of TV quality, but the fact that you can see the man moving might help to jog someone's memory."