Shock as Leeds man has £3,000 sofa blown from balcony and skewered by a spike in city centre

James Penny, the managing director of recruitment agency Morgan King, was in Dubai when he received a call informing him that his £3,000 rattan sofa had been put up for sale on Facebook Marketplace – after it had blown off his balcony on Whitehall Waterfront and been impaled by a spike.

“We first heard about it when James messaged us asking if we could get his sofa down from a lamp post,” explained Gemma Fitzgerald, operations manager at Morgan King. “It had blown off his terrace and someone had taken the liberty of advertising it on Facebook as a free to collect item.”

Uploaded to the social media sales platform by an unknown trickster, James’s sofa had quickly gathered the attention people online, with people contacting James through Instagram to ask if the sofa in question was indeed his – and for sale.

"So many people saw his patio furniture on the spike that someone messaged him to let him know, and the council have took it upon themselves to come and get a crane to get it from the lampost!” laughed Gemma. “They came and put it back in the building but it’s obviously now got a massive hole in it – it’s been an absolute nightmare for James to deal with and he’s mortified! He wasn’t due back from Dubai until a week on Friday but with everything going on he’s coming back early.”