When I first started working for a news agency in the mid to late 1990s I looked back through the negatives – yes it was pre-digital – and I found references to defendants in court cases with strange nicknames.

It turned out they were youths who could not be identified because they had appeared in adult courts but they were still to young to be identified in the press.

One example was Spiderboy who earned his nickname after a series of dramatic escapes when he was a prolific young offender in the 1990s including one incident where he managed to squeeze his way out of a secure court dock.

His crime spree continued into adulthood when he was eventually named and shamed as Thomas Laws in subsequent court cases – two years ago police appealed to the public to turn him in because he was wanted on emergency prison recall.

One case I covered was a prolific repeat offender, who was initially known only as Boomerang Boy because he would repeatedly get get prosecuted, put into secure accommodation and escaped only to return home.

Initially the local press christened him Homing Pigeon Boy but we thought Boomerang Boy had more of a ring to it.

When this case was heard at Bishop Auckland Youth Court a few journalists were there to challenge the order that he should not be identified and, initially, we could only name him but not show his face.

So he was revealed as being 15-year-old Shaun Andrew McKerry but bizarrely we could not show his face – hence this front page pic in the Daily Star.

After the court hearing myself and a colleague were waiting outside the court to get a snatched picture through the police car of McKerry when he was taken away for his presumed short-lived incarceration.

An officer approached us and asked who we were waiting for and we said McKerry. The response was that he would be out in 10 minutes and we basically lit up the vehicle like a Christmas Tree from both sides.

Initially the shot was used with obscured eyes to preserve his identity but I was quite pleased when it was eventually able to be used prominently in the Independent unobscured following another more successful appeal to the courts.