Famous People

I wasn’t really interested if someone that I arrested was famous or not, I mean most famous people weren’t criminals (were they?). On our ground at Chiswick we had the entertainer, Tommy Cooper and his wife living nearby and we had to patrol past their property at least once a day. He reportedly used to put a few bottles across the station desk every Christmas time, although I never saw any of it.  His house wasn’t far away and was in the same street as a children’s home or refuge that we used to get a fair bit of grief from, and there was also another Children’s home nearby. We’d often be called to distrurbances that usually was connected to drinks or drugs, or if the children hadn’t come home for the night, usually because they were at parties. We also had a Women’s Refuge on the ground and calls to there we treated as emergencies as usually it was an estranged or ex-husband that had found her location and was causing trouble. A number of the ex-husbands ended up in the cells and in front of the Magistrate the next morning for breaches of the peace. We also had the UK’s representative of the PLO living in Chiswick and we’d have to patrol past there as well. I had occassion to look around the house of one of the ‘James Bond’ actors after the house alarm had gone off when he was away (not saying nothing), and it’s not the James Bond depicted below which was presented to me in my capacity as a song lyricist.

 

 

 

 

Other celebrities that lived or have lived in Chiswick include Ant & Dec, Roger Daltry, Jeremy Vine, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Richard Briers, David Tennant, Vanessa Redgrave, Clare Balding, Sarah Greene and Colin Firth, Nigel Havers, Kate Beckinsdale, Moira Stewart, and Mark Knopfler had his recording studios in Chiswick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I had retired from the police and had emmigrated with family, I worked for 26 years at a foreign Embassy and met famous people on a regular basis as part of my duties. These ranged from Presidents, politicians, film directors, actors, musicians to Royalty, in fact I toured the country on four different occassions with one of the Princesses of Thailand as part of Her entourage and I was tasked with all matters pertaining to the Royal motorcade. An English princess that I’d wished I’d met was Princess Diana. I was on duty for her wedding to Charles in July 1981, and in fact their open carriage passed under the bridge I was posted on and she looked up and waved in my direction. Another celebrity I’d met when I was 15 was Andy Warhol who more or less bumped into me in the street, but otherwise I haven’t gone out of my way to meet celebrities.

 

 

 

The incident below must have been about the last before I went off sick never to return and it sticks in my mind, not only because the suspect was the brother of the Uk’s most famous athelete, but because 3 years later he would end up being murdered in the street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Police Driving

I had passed my standard police driving course (Panda) on 7 March 1986.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was sent on a number of Police courses, including In 1988 an Advanced Drivers Course in learning to drive a Police car at high speeds safely through the streets of London. On these driving courses you weren’t subjected to the statutory legal speed limits and I remember driving back towards Hendon Police College with my instructor next to me, and with 2 other pupils in the back at 140 mph (nearly 200 kph) in an old unmarked Police Rover down Hendon Way, and it’s funny how quiet everyone was in the car, in fact I think they were all holding their breaths and you could hear a pin drop! Our daily driving would start from the driving school at Hendon Police College and we went out with 2 groups, with 2 cars in each group in unmarked police cars to surrounding counties. I remember one day we were driving out in Lincolnshire when a driver in the other group failed to negotiate a sharp bend at high speed and he drove straight off the road into a recently ploughed field. No-one was injured but as a result of the accident he was relieved of his driving duties. That was contrary to the second car in the second group a few weeks later that was being driven by the son of a high ranking Metroploitan police officer, who drove at high speed over a humped back bridge, not being able to know what was on the other side, and lo and behold the lead car in his group had stopped on the other side of the hump bridge and he drove at speed into the back of the stationary police car. Luckily no-one suffered serious injury and we were all astounded to learn that he wasn’t relieved of his driving duties as a result of the accident, well I’m sure that his daddy was very pleased indeed!

But I actually wasn’t that interested in becoming an Advanced Police Driver and thankfully I failed the final test as I wouldn’t put other innocent road users in danger by chasing a car that was the ‘Bandit Car’ driven by another police driving examiner that had suddenly pulled left off the motorway across three lanes of busy motorway traffic down a sliproad at high speed. I felt that to pursue him would have caused danger to other road users and most probably would have caused an accident. I have always been a safe driver who weighs up each situation and to date, in over 52 years of driving, I have never ever had a car accident, but it seems that that’s not what the police examiner wanted from his Advanced Police Driver on that day in letting the ‘Bandit car’ get away. I can say that I gained alot of driving experience from that Advanced driving course and it made me an even better and an even safer driver, unfortunately, the same can’t be said for others who did pursue the ‘bandit car’ at high speed off the motorway and passed their Advanced driving course, as a number of then subsequently had serious road traffic accidents whilst driving their Area Cars.

One of my 2 injuries on duty happend when I was the radio transmitter operator on the Area Car, ‘Tango One’ and we had just finished with a stop on the A4, a few hundred yards from the end of the M4 into London. We had just got back into the police car when my driver, looking in his rear view mirror told me to put my seatbelt on and to push myself down into the seat of our Rover SD1. A few seconds later we were hit in the rear of the police car by a drunk driver who had come off the M4 at about 40 mph and seemed to have been attracted by our police cars illuminated blue lights, and had driven into the back of our car without braking. Luckily our old Rover SD1 was solidly built and our police car was flung forward a number of yards and our bodies were forced forwards and then back into our seats causing whiplash to our necks. We were taken by ambulance to West Middlesex Hospital and after examination we were both placed into neck braces. I only stayed off work sick for 2 weeks as I was itching to get back. I received minimal compensation from the ‘drunk driver’ who by then had been dealt with by court and had been fined and disqualified from driving. I had to sign an agreement that I couldn’t take any further action against him after I had received the compensation as a check up by my doctor appeared to show no further internal injury. Unfortunately, and I deeply regret, that I rushed back to work too soon as to this day I suffer from Spinal Stenosis that I believe is a consequence of this accident and I am medically disabled according to the National Insurance Institute.