by Harry Morris
‘Not a great deal, sir. There isn’t an awful lot of serious crime happening in the area I work, but I have been responsible for dealing with and clearing up a lot of petty complaints and domestic disputes,’ he remarked.
The commandant stared at him for a moment and, leaning forward to subtlety sniff him, he then asked, ‘Do you like to have a drink, Officer Wilson?’
Shaking his head, a rather cocky Wilson responded, ‘Not just now, sir, it’s too early for me!’
To which the commandant said, ‘I wasn’t offering, Wilson, I was bloody well asking if you had!’
Last to Know
• • •
An inspector called at his divisional headquarters to enquire why he had not received the latest agenda for a forthcoming meeting, which he knew he was required to attend in the near future.
The excuse he was given was the fact that he would be working night shift on the particular date of the meeting, and someone else had been notified to attend and take his place.
‘Hold on a minute!’ he said. ‘I’m early shift on that date.’
Back came the reply, ‘Oh, has nobody told you yet? Your shift duties have been changed. As from next week, you’re being transferred to a new relief and subdivision.’
And what was the subject of the meeting he was originally to attend?
Why, only the meeting being held for the launch of the latest police slogan: ‘Investors in People’, that’s all.
Official Stamp
• • •
Following on from the last story, a serving police officer received a message that a letter addressed to him, was being held at the local post office depot.
The message also stated that because the letter had been posted without a stamp on it, he would have to pay an extra cost for the privilege of collecting it.
Off he duly went in full uniform to the local post office depot, where he was slagged off by the postal staff in the depot for having correspondents writing to him who ‘deliberately’ evaded paying postage.
On finally taking receipt of the letter, he was astounded to learn that it was an official Strathclyde Police envelope and it had been sent to him on official police business from the Strathclyde Personnel Department, Pitt Street HQ.
Now it’s all very well to launch new slogans advocating ‘Investors in People’, but it might be a better idea if first the police became ‘Investors in Postage Stamps’!
Who’s a Pretty Boy, Then?
• • •
This, alas, is the sad tale of a cop who decided to do a good deed and take a homeless ‘burd’ home to the house.
Now before you let your dirty mind run riot, let me explain to you that it was the feathered variety.
It transpired that a canary flew into an open window and the lady house owner brought it to the police station and handed it in as found property.
As it was, there had been no reported loss of the bird, so the local community cop elected to take it home with him and have it adopted by his weans.
The kids were over the moon, and housed it temporarily in a cardboard box, while they all went off with Daddy to the pet shop to purchase a cage, bell, bath, mirror, etc., for their new lodger.
Unfortunately, while they were out, the wee canary escaped from the box and, while sitting, singing away, was promptly killed by the family’s pet Jack Russell.
This was very heart-breaking for the kids, who were distraught and had to be consoled by Daddy.
However, as if this wasn’t bad enough, the following day a lady called at the police station to collect her little sweety pie, having been told by the other woman that she had handed it into the police the day before! Gulp!
Love’s on the Rocks
• • •
I was sitting in the hairdresser’s the other day, waiting my turn, and I picked up a magazine with an article on Neil Diamond, the singer/songwriter.
Apparently he has just gone through a divorce from his wife and agreed to give her a final settlement of $150 million.
For that kind of money, I’d have married him, but that’s not my point.
The point is that Neil is now reluctant to marry his present girlfriend Rosie because he doesn’t want to lose any more money.
Now I could see the reason behind this decision if she had only been with him a few months, but it turns out she has been living with him for ten years.
As Neil states in his interview, ‘We have a great relationship together and she is very caring and understanding with me and gives me her honest opinion, with regards to everything I do, in particular the new songs I compose.’
But further down the interview/article, he informs you that she is 70 per cent deaf!
Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, Neil, but it’s no wonder she gets on well with you and appears to like every song you’ve composed and sung to her recently.
It’s because she can’t bloody hear you singing, that’s why!
Now, poor old Neil has a backlog of about 4,000 songs he’s composed and has had to pre-book the local recording studio for the next fifteen years to try and record them all on to CD before he pops his clogs.
The poor man’s demented.
He doesn’t believe he has written a crap song in the last ten years.
I’ll let you into a secret, Neil: every time you composed a new song and played it to your live-in burd, she couldn’t hear a thing and just assumed for the last ten years you’ve been playing ‘Love on the Rocks’ to her.
And as a result, when you said to her, ‘What do you think of that one, hen?’ she just took her eyes off her knitting long enough to glance over at you, nod her head and say, ‘I love it, Neil, it’s my favourite.’
So here’s a wee tip, Neil! You’d be better playing her ‘Crackling Rosie’, ’cause apparently the ‘crackling’ part is about all she’s hearing anyway!
Order in the Court
• • •
True Stories from the Law Courts
DEFENCE SOLICITOR: Now, Doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
Hold On There
• • •
On his way to the post office, an elderly man suffered a heart attack, collapsed and died outside the door.
Donnie Henderson was the nearest cop to the location and attended to assist.
While awaiting the arrival of the ambulance, the man’s wife, who had been sitting in the family car in the nearby car park, waiting on his return, appeared at the scene to see why he was taking so long, and recognised him lying there.
Experience had taught Donnie that fainting was not uncommon in such circumstances and, as a result, he put a fatherly arm on her shoulders to comfort her.
Suddenly, the wife’s knees appeared to buckle, but Donnie held her up.
However, her legs appeared to buckle again, prompting Donnie to tighten his grip around her shoulders and hold her more firmly.
As he did so, the woman looked at him straight in the eye and said in a broad Irish brogue, ‘For Christ’s sake, son, will you let me kneel down and say a wee prayer over me poor man?’
PC Humour
• • •
Just to prove that computers have a sense of humour, I relate a story sent to me regarding the computer network installed at divisional HQ several years ago.
The computer had many functions, including producing official letter headings, bearing at the top the name and qualifications of the then chief constable, John Hoddinot.
The only problem was, when the computer performs a spellcheck of his name ‘Hoddinot’, it automatically changes it to ‘Whodunit’!
In another police force not too far away, it just so happened that another chief constable was having PC/typing error problems also, with regards to revelations about his apparent past.
The Police Guardian newspaper-cum-magazine, distributed around the police service
, reported his appointment as thus: ‘In 1976, he was selected for the Special Course for Young Offenders…’
What it should have read was the ‘Special Course for Young Officers’.
Don’t think he was too pleased with them.
Frankie the Flop
• • •
One of my biggest problems when managing and performing with the Scottish folk band was Frankie!
Frankie was like the proverbial ‘dug on heat’.
He was desperate – if he was a woman he would have been referred to as a strumpet, his behaviour was that of an out-and-out slapper who you couldn’t trust to leave in the same room for two minutes with your granny!
I know this from experience, having observed him over several months, and saw him lumber some of the weirdest-looking humans, for want of a better description, and take them home.
It’s frightening to think how these people felt when they woke in the morning and turned around to see Frankie lying in the bed beside them! Aarghhh!
Anyways, the story is, we were touring Moscow and I specifically made the decision that no females would travel back to our hotel in the band’s tour bus after a concert.
That said, Frankie, outwith my hearing, decided to organise another form of transport for two girls.
Back at the hotel, Frankie shared a twin room with me and I totally refused to allow him to bring them anywhere near my room.
As a result, he offered another band member $30 to let him use his room.
A further $10 were spent on his condoms.
In the meantime, I was sitting in my room having a few whiskies with our Russian tour agent Vitaly and a couple of the other band members, when out of the blue Vitaly said, in a rather matter-of-fact tone of voice, ‘A toast! To Frankie, for tomorrow, he will be dead!’
I raised my glass to my mouth, then realised what he had just said.
‘What do you mean, he will be dead?’ I asked.
‘Unless he pays the small girl for having sex with the tall girl, he will be dead. They work for Russian Mafia!’
I immediately put down my glass and ran out the room to the elevator, got off at the floor where he had taken them and knocked on the room door, ignoring the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.
A few moments later, Frankie opened the door wearing only his kilt and with more fake tan stripes down his chest than Tony the Tiger.
‘Aw, whit is it now, Harry?’ he said, really annoyed at my intrusion. ‘I’m in the middle of something which has nothing to do with you, or the band, so what is it?’
As I looked over his shoulder, I could see the smaller girl, sitting fully clothed on a chair with a mobile phone in her hand, and the other girl half naked on the bed.
‘I’m sorry, Frankie! But I just thought you should know, those burds work for the …’ I then spelled out ‘M-A-F-I-A’.
Frankie, fake tan and all, turned a whiter shade than Michael Jackson while taking on a worried look.
He gulped and said, ‘Oh fuck! Help me, Harry. What will I do?’
‘Well, I think first of all I would immediately develop a severe migraine, or better still, I’d tell them I’ve just informed you about a death in your family,’ I suggested.
‘Who is it that’s deid?’ he asked in all seriousness.
‘You are!’ I replied. ‘If you don’t get them out of there pronto. And don’t be bringing them anywhere near my room … Take them as far away from here as possible!’
‘Like, take them where?’ he asked.
‘Siberia would be a good starting point,’ I answered.
I then ran back down to my room, where Vitaly was happily helping himself to my malt in my absence.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about them sooner?’ I asked.
‘I did. I tried to tell him, but Frankie, he can only think with his penis, so his head was empty,’ he replied.
Moments later, there was a knock at my room door and as I opened it, Frankie was standing there, holding his jacket and kilt belt.
‘Are they away?’ I asked him. ‘Tell me they’ve gone!’
‘Well, not exactly,’ he said. ‘They’re standing along at the elevator, waiting for me to pay them to leave!’
‘How much do they want paid?’ I asked.
‘Two hundred dollars!’ he blurted out.
On hearing that, I did what any self-respecting, decent living person in my position as the band manager would do.
I told him to fuck right off and slammed the door shut in his face.
Bang, bang, bang! I opened the door again.
‘Please, Harry, please just lend me the money and deduct it from my pay for the tour!’
‘Why should I?’ I said. ‘You brought this on yourself!’
‘’Cause I’ll give two-fifty back,’ he answered.
I reluctantly agreed and gave him the money to pay them off and be rid of them for good.
Later that night, while finishing off the rest of my whisky, I asked him, ‘Did you not suspect there was something not right about them two?’
‘Well, looking back now, the wee yin did all the negotiating and told the big yin whit to do, while she sat in a chair and just watched us,’ he explained. ‘I just thought she was kinky and would join in later.’
‘What about the big yin?’ I asked. ‘Could she not speak any English for herself?’
‘Her? She couldn’t speak any of anything. She was deaf and dumb!’ he replied.
‘Well, there’s one good thing to come out of it all,’ Ian, the lead vocalist said, ‘she didn’t need to suffer listening to all that shite you spout at us!’
Then Hamish chipped in with some words of wisdom: ‘See the next time you feel horny, Frankie? Just have yourself a bit of old rhyming slang, “Frank”! That way, you don’t need an agent, you don’t need a manager and you can handle yourself. By the way, it’s also a helluva lot cheaper!’
A Colourful Life
• • •
A young punk rocker was arrested for causing a disturbance in a shopping mall and taken to the police station to be charged.
The elderly cop responsible for processing the prisoners on the computer summoned the young punk to be brought before him to note his details.
The punk stood there proudly, with his hair all spiked and sticking up and dyed with various bright colours – blue, red, green, orange and yellow. You name a colour, he had it.
The elderly cop was somewhat surprised by the young man’s appearance and stared at him for a few moments, whereby the punk reacted and said sarcastically to him, ‘What’s up with you, auld man? Have you never done anything wild in your miserable life before?’
The elderly cop just shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head, before he replied, ‘I have, son. I once got that drunk I had sex with an African parrot. And just for a brief moment there, I was wondering if you were the result of that wild night!’
Little Voice
• • •
Colin Muir used to be a City of Glasgow cop who transferred down south to work, and one day he was standing outside the scene of a murder.
A young boy approached and enquired what had happened, so Colin announced in his Glaswegian accent (Taggart-style), ‘There’s been a murder!’
To which the wee boy responded, ‘You’re from Scotland Yard. I can tell by your voice.’
Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You. Maybe!
• • •
My old mate Donnie Henderson called me up the other night and said, ‘Hi, Harry boy, how the fuck are you?’
‘I’m fine, Donnie, but I’m eager to hear your latest scam that you wish to involve me in,’ I replied.
‘Not at all, Harry boy, but I’ll tell you what it is. I phoned that bloody Samaritans mob up for wee blether, that was all. I just wanted to have a chat with somebody, it wasn’t meant to get suggestive, but I thought we were forming a wee chatline relationship and she liked me. So I just asked her to describe what she was wearing.’
‘You’
ve got to be kidding! What happened?’ I asked.
‘She called me a dirty old man and slammed the phone down on me!’ he replied rather despondently.
‘She slammed the phone down on you? What, like this, Donnie?’ I said, replacing the receiver.
Quiet Please!
• • •
Having babysat a young probationer for several months, I decided it was time he took control and dealt with the next incident while I stood back and watched.
Moments later, we received a complaint of a disturbance between neighbours.
We arrived at the address and spoke with the complainer and were informed that the next door neighbour had been drinking and started arguing with her son and threatened to ‘kick his arse’ if he didn’t move away from the close-mouth.
Having heard their side of the story, we went next door to listen to the neighbour’s version.
When we entered, there were two couples, all drinking, and they all wanted to talk at the same time.
So as Graeme, the probationer, asked the woman of the house for her version, he was bombarded with four slightly pissed adults shouting different versions of the incident at him.
It was a total rabble of noise, peppered with swearing.
I stood back, waiting for Graeme to take charge, until I could take it no more and shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Shut up!’
Unfortunately, I frightened the life out of poor Graeme, who physically jumped up, knocking his hat off!
We Have a Winner
• • •
The community involvement inspector, Maggie McLean, was arranging an away day for the kids of the police officers in her station, and as a matter of professional courtesy she extended the invitation to the local fire station.
On the day of the trip, only two wee boys, whose father was a leading fireman from the fire station, turned up to go.
