Moat wasn't the only one with a gun to his head

Published 15 Jul 2010 11:00

THERE was something very odd about the events leading up to Raoul Moat's demise.

It wasn't that every villager in Rothbury had apparently spent several days bumping into the fugitive, with the exception of the heavily armed police goons being employed to do so.

Nor indeed that their fellow Northumbrians might be wondering where Robocop and his mates get to when they ring to report yobbos breaking windows or kicking over their dustbins, only to be told there aren't any coppers available.

Maybe after a dozen arrests and only one conviction Rahul (as Radio 5's Stephen Nolan insisted on calling him throughout Friday night) was convinced of his charmed existence. But he'd need to be seriously thick to believe, having murdered one man and shot a PC, a police message urging him to surrender, which contained the bogus reassuring words: "You have a future."

When Gazza arrived it seemed only a matter of time before he was joined by Susan Boyle, Pete Doherty, Paris Hilton, the Duchess of York and the casts of Emmerdale and Dallas to create a cross between soap opera and freak show.

But most seriously odd was the robotic performances of the terrible twins; the lady chief constable apparently in the middle of a bad hair year, and her head of CID who in the course of the week developed a blemish on his lip, either from an advancing cold sore or anguished gnawing. It seemed equally appalling and astonishing that neither of them appeared capable of speaking without reading - each - word - deliber - ately - and - slowly - off a sheet of paper like automatons. Even when asked a question, Cold Sore recited a pre-prepared answer from his crib sheet.

Recalling times when senior detectives use to conduct press conferences with the flair of an evangelical preacher or a Shakespearian actor, were the Odd Couple so unsure of themselves, or simply terrified of their words returning to haunt them during the inevitable public inquiry?

- WHETHER it was Alan Hansen spouting "grit and determination" from a studio which might as well have been in London, or Nicky Campbell in Capetown conducting a World Cup phone-in with someone from Camden, life at the BBC must be positively claustrophobic now its wastefully overmanned battalions are traipsing back from South Africa.

But even the TV Licence's staunchest supporters surely acknowledged defeat at the sight of smirking multi-millionaire Jonathan Ross imploring his final BBC audience to guffaw at a photograph of a phallus-shaped vegetable.

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