TWATS sign confirmed as work of Thwaites employee; more updates

A Thwaites insider has informed Blackburn Bugle that the hilarious modification to the iconic brewery sign was indeed the work of a disgruntled employee.

Some time ago, the neon tubes inside the sign's letters were rewired so each letter is powered by its own transformer; as a result there is one circuit breaker per letter, making such a task a doddle for anyone with the correct access.

Thwaites today published a confusingly brief acknowledgement of the incident which explains absolutely nothing but does pay lip service to the staff affected by the cuts.

Since the Blackburn Bugle broke the news yesterday evening, the photos have gone viral and the story has been picked up by The Huffington Post, Mail Online, The Mirror and other online news sources.

Amusingly, the Lancashire Telegraph's print version of the story (above) announces that Thwaites plan to PROBE the massive TWATS. This was presumably not intended as a callback to our old Probe Bureau article.

Massive illuminated sign on Blackburn skyline sabotaged to read "TWATS"

That's right; between 16:26 and 16:50 today, the huge illuminated sign on top of Blackburn's most famous landmark, the Thwaites Brewery, was sabotaged to display the word "TWATS" in massive red letters.

The reasons for this are unclear, but it seems likely that the spectacle is related to the recent news that the brewery, a centre of Blackburn's economy since the 19th Century, is planning to axe 60 jobs as part of a scaling-back operation, following the failure to sell land around the brewery to supermarket chain Sainsbury's.

Sadly, shortly after these photos were taken, the iconic sign was switched off, presumably as the brewery staff realised what had happened.

We understand that Blackburn's newspaper, the Lancashire Telegraph, will be leading with this story in tomorrow's edition. Which will be hilarious. Here's some more angles for your amusement.

All photos by Alex Martindale. Feel free to reproduce commercially or non-commercially, but please retain original credit. This is NOT a satire or a hoax.

UPDATE: Thanks to Ken Phillips for pointing out that the sign was visible from 16:26, a good fifteen minutes earlier than I first saw it.