Confessions of a Copper
Channel 4
Do police officers still visit schools? In my day, they were always around. In primary school, there was the annual “don’t-accept-sweets-from-strangers” talk, after which we’d get to gawp at their handcuffs; also, at the summer fete, there was the inevitable display of police Alsatians leaping through burning tyres. In secondary school, assemblies were frequently attended by the local constabulary, who were there to give us the bad news about glue, alcohol or truancy. No wonder I came to think of the police as the human equivalent of a hissing gas fire and a beaten-up Datsun Cherry, quotidian and rather cosy. Doubtless this was the plan. I lived, after all, in South Yorkshire, a county whose force’s more disgraceful black marks include the Hillsborough disaster, a failure to investigate Jimmy Savile and, more recently, the Rotherham child abuse scandal.
Confessions of a Copper (19 November, 10pm) on Channel 4 speaks directly to our collective loss of innocence over the police, taking us from Juliet Bravo to Line of Duty via Life on Mars, with the crucial difference that its stars – a motley collection of retired officers – are real. Their moustaches and perms have nothing to do with any costume department; their prejudices and platitudes are all their own.
The producers have certainly given them (and us) help in the nostalgia stakes. The film was replete with footage of Vauxhall Vivas, “race riots” and WPCs modelling “hostess” caps and handbags (in which they were expected to stash their vibrator-sized mini truncheons). But when they wallow in the triumphs of the past – “You were the man!” said one, recalling the days when policemen were so “respected” that local market traders used to give every passing bobby a lump of meat to take back to the sergeant – their conviction has none of the unhinged exuberance you find in a drama. It isn’t wild so much as pathetic, their sadness at the passing of the good old days etched on their faces like grief.
I sensed sneaking admiration on the part of the producers when the coppers talked about giving the cons cold baths – and worse – to loosen their tongues, which made for an odd shift of tone when, later, they were obliged to lead their subjects to the bear pits of racism and sexual harassment (there was some mean-spirited editing here). But then, this territory is uneven. Internalised sexism, for instance, is complicated. Carole Phillips, who rose to the rank of superintendent, confessed that she’d been “terrified” of an initiation ceremony in which the blokes inked the bare bottoms of WPCs with the station stamp. But she was smiling as she spoke of it and had clearly loved her job.
Jean Wigmore, who served for 32 years and became an expert in domestic violence, was in tears as she described the day when, in a police social club, the men dragged her around by her ankles, her legs apart so that they might see her suspenders. But she (literally) couldn’t remember the word “diversity” when she needed it and complained that the rise of political correctness had resulted in officers who were “frightened of breathing”. She seemed not to notice the contradiction here and the director was uninterested in teasing its subtleties out.
It probably goes without saying that I found it easy to keep my nostalgia in check. Tampering with evidence? Fitting up? Weird comments about “menopausal” shoplifters? No, thanks.
My stomach lurched when I saw an early panda car tootling ridiculously through some suburban streets (a peculiar neighbour of ours kept several mouldering on his drive). But then one of the men – I can’t recall if it was Ken “PC is bollocks” German or Stephen “Menopausal women are capable of anything” Hayes – started talking about how handy these cars were for sex and the sensation swiftly left me.
In the end, only one thing pitched me into a frenzy of remembering and it had nothing to do with the law. In one old clip, snow lay all about, grey at the edges as if it had been there for a while. People picked their way through it, shoulders down, embattled in their too-thin overcoats. Snow! Remember that? I for one miss it more than I can possibly say.
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