My father the policeman

Lying in bed the other day, I remembered a strange occasion when my father decided that six months imprisonment and a £5,000 penalty was insufficient deterrant to prevent him from impersonating a police officer. As I recall it, he pulled his car across the front of a double decker bus to force it to stop, leapt out of the car shouting at the bus driver to stay where he was under orders of the police, stormed the bus and up the stairs and then attempted to arrest two young teenage boys.

I was a young teenage boy myself, and my embarassment at his behaviour was matched in magnitude by the boys' absolute terror at being confronted by Gene Hunt. Thankfully, the arrest did not proceed, although he did march the boys off the bus to take their details before permitting it to continue.

My dad later claimed that the boys had been throwing bricks out of the top window down onto his car. As a passenger who was sitting in the backseat, who understands something about the momentum of buses and the sealed nature of top deck front windows, I cannot now confirm this is likely.

My dad was always prone to a little road rage, although of course this was before the term 'road rage' was invented. A few years later we were in Ireland, driving from Dublin to Tipperary, and a motocyclist overtook us. My dad took this as a personal slight and accelerated, overtaking the motorcyclist in turn. He of course then did the same, until the two drivers were trapped in an insane battle of speed, accelerating through the country lanes in a determined battle to beat the other, the cyclist waving his fingers in fury and my dad consumed with anger and bellowing abuse at the wheel.

It could only have a disastrous end. As we reached the Tipperary city limits and the speed limit felt to 30mph, my dad hit the brakes and the cyclist went flying into the back of the car.

My dad pulled over, but this time did not impersonate a police officer. The rest of the family was petrified as of course a fist fight would be the only way to settle this, but in fact things were suddenly incredibly amicable. I think probably because it turned out they were both English, and it isn't very English to argue in public. My dad apologised if his bumper got in the cyclist's way, and the cyclist - peeling himself off the tarmac - apologised if he'd done any damage to my dad's car. They shook hands and went on their way.

The closest my dad ever got to driving a police car was after we'd had a long boozy dinner up at the Spite with Kath, Alan and Helen, when he was too drunk to realise the car alarm was still on (but not, it seems, too drunk to drive). Motoring home, the car lights started flashing and the alarm blaring at full volume, in a satisfying imitation of a police panda car. Fortunately we did not attract the attention of any real officers, otherwise he might have got to ride in a police car for real.