Carry On COTgate: not the end of the affair, yet
One Direction`s Louis Tomlinson is being hotly tipped to play the lead role as Leicester City FC super striker Jamie Vardy in a Hollywood blockbuster to dramatise the most unlikely triumph in sporting history.
May 27, 2016
By Staff Officer Stitchley
One Direction`s Louis Tomlinson is being hotly tipped to play the lead role as Leicester City FC super striker Jamie Vardy in a Hollywood blockbuster to dramatise the most unlikely triumph in sporting history.
It was a case of `dream on` when the man who had never won a top football title Claudio Ranieri took over at the King Power stadium and the Foxes were installed as 5,000-1 no-hopers to win the Premier League.
The rest is, well, where farce collided at the far post with football and a far-fetched movie of their incredible success now looks a forgone conclusion.
But word has reached me of another fanciful example of forceful foreplay, not I hasten to add of the Four Four Two variety, which should be heading for the big screen.
It is 56 years since the cast and crew of the most successful comedy film series in cinematic history sent up the British bobby as four rookie officers turned a police station into a madhouse.
Well, for nearly a month, an employment tribunal in apty-named Kings Court in North Shields has been playing host to something that would have given Carry On Constable a good run for its money in the farce stakes if the subject matter and ultimate consequences had not been so serious.
Let us set the scene and imagine the cameras rolling to witness a plot you could not have made up and which, in parts, mirrors the 1960 low-budget film containing an energetic mix of parody, farce, slapstick and double entendres.
So lie back and think not of England, generally, but of a fictional place called COTgate in the ancient kingdom of Northumbria (which once stretched from the rivers Humber across to the Mersey and up to the Forth) and was policed in those far-off days by Danelaw. Now fast forward to a time in the early part of the 21st century.
Our hypothetical new movie Carry On COTgate (COC) is taken straight from the titillating text of the tribunal and lays bare scandalous claims swirling around a police force involving affairs, harassment, bullying, corruption and cover-ups. All denied with large helpings of vim and vigour.
There is even a `Butlins for Bobbies` sketch involving “love pads” which could have been taken straight off the back of a dirty postcard from the seaside.
In the original COC (Carry On Constable) the lower ranks make hay and mayhem with the love interest centering on PC Constable and WPC Passworthy.
In its salacious sequel, from the evidence, the upper echelons of Northumbria Police are portrayed as `Top Cop On Heat`, all brought into candid camera by the force`s former head of legal services in her claim for unfair dismissal.
It is Denise Aubrey the loyal servant of 20 years and “keeper of the secrets” who is cast in the guise of `Ooh matron, what a carry on`.
She brings the action in the first place (following her sacking for gross misconduct), and after apparently telling staff details of the allegations involving ex-Chief Constable Mike Craik.
Rumours had circulated in the force that in 2007 Mr Craik had been having an alleged affair with Assistant Chief Constable Carolyn Peacock, and that her cuckolded husband Chief Superintendent Jim Peacock gave him a black eye after allegedly punching the chief constable at an alleged barbecue.
Mr Craik`s worried wife Sharon apparently pressed a panic alarm at the home in Bamburgh, Northumberland. Armed officers were called but the incident was deleted from the record, it is claimed.
The affair was strenuously denied and Mr Craik`s wife of 25 years, Sharon, returned from a holiday with her husband to tell the hearing: “He`s no cheat”.&