I was at Thorney at the time and remember the stir it caused. The Varsity was a delight to fly but I reckon it needed a bit more stick time than this chap had.
It was about that time that we lost another Varsity with double engine fire or failure. The crew baled out onto Dartmoor or Exmoor and the Varsity landed itself along the bed of a stream with remarkably little apparent damage.
The stolen Varsity was a sort of 'copycat' episode following a similar theft of a Prentice from Swanton Morley some months earlier.