There was a time I got interviews but not the job. Interviewed by kids, appointing Grandad and asking questions about sucking eggs. So I would go to all these interviews and recount the past, cases like when the Nuns and Monks were double booked into the same hotel accommodation. yes you read that right, it was in Rome during a holy year, made the front pages the court case did. My chief witness, who suffered at the incompetent hands of Westminster Travel, Father Ignatius McDonald Knight of St Columbus in Kensington Monastery with a cellar bar, and endless pints of Guiness...hic.
Anyway back to the plot, I always try to recount something new at these interviews, else I bore myself listening to the same old song, with a different meaning since I was gone.
One day, I forget which interview it was, 3 faces listening as they do, so I told them about the time I went to Blackpool in the late 70’s. I had a warrant, because in Britain’s premier shopping street Oxford Street they were selling fake Channel, Charlie and Ives St Laurent perfume. Made in London, Paris, New York, it actually was bottled in a council house via a yellow plastic funnel in Blackpool. The packaging was good, the mastermind, who also owned the plush Blackpool Country Tennis Club, had paid a proper printers in nearby Morecombe to create the almost exact packaging. These were the first instances of counterfeit goods on sale in this country.
So I turned up from London. I rendezvoused with an Officer from Wrexham, who had also come across the product. Blackpool Trading Standards showed no interest other than making me a cup of tea and showing me the addresses on a map.
So when I descended on matey at the council house, he refused any co operation. I saw the garden shed, asked him what was in it and for the key. He said he had no key and did not know what was in it. So I kicked the door in and blimey,it started swaying, the whole shed, and creeking, and then in a puff of dust the walls collapsed like a house of cards, bham. not only was it empty but is was not nailed together properly and collapsed roof and all, empty absolutely empty just dust………ooopppsss.
“Don’t wreck the whole place” Matey shouts out, “It’s all in the cellar”. And lo and behold the bottling plant was their in the cellar, so me and Mr Wrexham loaded all into my car back to London for the court case. Next time I should take a dog to scent the scent I guess, even fake not so smelly, scent.
Dear Mr Postman look and see, if there's, a leter, a letter for me
I came home from another job interview in Oxford, to find a letter from the postman, for another interview, and I had to read it 3 times, because I swear I never applied for this job!!!
Now the job in Oxford that I was qualified for, even though they wanted an unqualified officer, and it was a job, the duties of which I had done time and time again…..well I did not get that job. So rather than spiffing, I felt more like spitting .
At first I thought I could not possibly go for this 2nd interview in 2 weeks……..wooooooooo. As I said I had no recollection of applying, never heard of the company and the interview was in Her Majesty’s Pleasure yes a local prison (just visiting!!). Then I thought well this might be a job from the hand of god, like Maradonna’s hand ball goal in the World Cup against Peter Shilton, except my postman was the divine messenger.
I even asked for the person specification and the job advert, pretending I could not find it on their web site, when I emailed them my interview attendance confirmation. Still I cant remember applying, it’s like my name and address has been jumbled up with someone else’s.
Anyway the job was about rehabilitation of offenders. Hey I can’t get a job, so the job to go for is to try to get offenders not to re offend and get them a job. Very worthy actually. Now I convinced myself to go for it, even though I don’t have an Information Advice & Guidance qualification, but I have got life’s years of experience and common sense. We will see.
However,the job prospect did cause my thought process about how a lot of criminals are very clever, if only they devoted their brains to moral and legal practices. There are many I have come across, importing fake mobile phones, creating fake artwork, logistics , distribution, manufacture of fake designer clothing, overseas business trips, contacts. They were improper entrepreneurs.
For instance in the good old late 70’s when I was in Westminster, I was chasing a gang for 6 months. In that scenario you do try to get inside their minds in order to outwit them and therefore catch them. Their modus operandi was to go North twice a week to car auctions, buy a number of cheap unroadworthy second hand cars. Then they would give them a shampoo and set and sell them through newspaper advertisements as private individuals from varying addresses. They did not pay for the advertising and it seemed they were always on the move , week by week. New phone numbers, new addresses and the Evening Standard married up advertisements for flats to let with the cars to sell. The gang also had links with an estate agent , so the flat would be given the once over as well as the cars for sale outside in the street. None of the advertising was paid for. Also the gang leader used 10 different names and 10 different bank accounts.
Now, really, I quietly admired this guy. How on earth did he remember who he was in certain situations and with certain people, and what happened if the permutation changed and he was faced with a group who knew him by different names, the mind boggles. But, his mind did not, and for 6 months I was chasing shadows. Soon as I found out where he was, he and the gang had just exited stage left.
The mistake he made, and they all make mistakes, is he started using stolen MOT’s for the dangerous unroadworthy cars. One young couple with a child actually drove home after buying the car. As they rounded the North Circular Road a front wheel came off as they were driving, no exaggeration. So he had to use stolen MOTs, no expense was spared in selling the “excellent condition” jalopies.
Now I got Notting Hill CID interested and we hit a few past addresses. We found a rubber stamp that led us to a lock up garage workshop in Lots Road Chelsea, early in a dawn raid. This Detective Sergeant and I scaled the blue metal chained gates, and jumped over, and in true Tom & Jerry cartoon style, tried in vain to tread in mid air back up again as 2 Dobermans crept up below our airborne feet with their snarling jaws open. Ooooppps, clambering back up, the radio did not work in the Q car, so our intrepid plain clothes police officers had to wait at the end of the road to flag down a passing police car. No mobile phones in those days. Then Crocodile Dundee’s version of the Metropolitan Dog Handling Team turned up grinning with their lassoes and, guess what, the dog problem was no more.
Surprise surprise when the workers turned up , not to get the car shampoo and buckets out, but instead to be handcuffed and carted off in the black maria. So after 6 months in 72 hours the gang was being apprehended. One address remained in Maida Vale. The Territorial Support Group Police ( official name for Neanderthal officers) covered the back alleyway. The front door, no one answered and the police could not force it open. So I said I would drop kick it, and in true kung fu tradition I sailed horizontal straight through the door which remained locked with my legs in the house and my head, arms and torso in the street,,,,,,,,,,,derrrr. I get pulled out of splintered remnants of a black Victorian front door. Then the door was kicked off the lock and there was a chain. I go next door for a hack saw, we saw through the chain. Now as you can imagine 7am and all this door carpentry took quite a while and was not exactly quiet. The door finally bangs open and down the stairs comes Paul Walsh the gang leader in his dressing gown, asking “who is it”, to which a burly Police Sergeant’s reply was, “who is it” who the f***g hell you think it is, your nicked”
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