Tea & Truncheons: Tales of a British Bobby on the Beat

“Tea & Truncheons” Tales of a British Bobby | Take a journey with Kevin Hicks as he recalls his personal experiences as British Bobby patrolling the streets of England in the late 80s, early 90s. With his usual vivid storytelling and raw anecdotes, these engaging tales not only shed light on the dynamic nature of police work but also celebrates the camaraderie and resilience of those who proudly serve their communities.

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Hi my name’s Kevin Hicks, welcome to the History  Squad. Now this video has been voted in by our   Patreon members. Now every month we do a Patreon  poll and they get to choose what video we’re going  

To record for one of the weeks of the month, this  one is all about my personal stories as Kevin the   police officer, Kevin the Bobby on the beat.  But let me explain Bobby, it’s an English term,   it’s affectionate. It comes from Sir Robert Peel,  Home Secretary and one of the important founders  

Of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 you also get  ‘peelers’ from Sir Robert Peel, but I was never   called a peeler. Mostly I was actually called  a copper. ‘Hey copper, what are you doing?’ But   that’s from 1704, that’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s  from the Oxford dictionary, it’s to apprehend,  

To capture. ‘It’s a fair cop Guv,’ you’ve caught  him, you’re a copper. So without further ado,   let’s get into some of my stories from my  time on the beat in Denham in Buckinghamshire,   England. So my first story, now before I actually  go into the story let me explain as a Bobby on the  

Beat way back in the late 80s early 90s we wore a  tunic and a policeman’s helmet. I had a whistle,   uh a truncheon, a notebook and handcuffs and  an old Pye radio which wasn’t very good, uh  

But I used to wander around my beat on my own, no  backup to speak of, it was the old days I suppose   you’d call it. No stab vest and no stun guns or  anything. Pretty good job really because if you  

Had have given me any kind of stun gun, people  would have been collapsing just for fun. But   you never knew what was going to happen, and I’m  wandering around on the beat, saying good morning,  

Checking up on old ladies and things like this  that I used to do when the radio burst into life   and I received a message that there’s a death, and  they gave me the address, and they says that the  

Widow is distraught. So this sounded routine so  off I walked yeah? It’s only 10 minutes away, I   knock on the door, the door flies open and into my  arms falls this elderly lady and I mean she fell,  

She collapsed into my arms, her head is pressed so  tight against me and the tears are flowing she’s   sobbing inconsolable. Neighbors are coming out,  so I I walk her back into her house, I knew where   the kitchen was which is vital because that’s  where they keep the tea. I managed to just pull  

Her back and she is flooding with tears, but here  printed is p, y, e, from my radio, Pye, and I saw   it. I didn’t laugh because this is serious stuff  and I say “Where, where is your husband’s body?”  

“He’s in the car.” I said “I’m sorry?” “He’s in  the car, he’s in the boot.” The boot in English,   American, Canadian it’s the trunk, and I all of  a sudden I’ve gone from a routine death of an  

Elderly person to a murder. Is it a murder? What  on Earth has happened? And I now got the image of   a crunched up husband who’s been murdered in the  boot of a car, in the trunk of a car. So I said  

“Well will you show me?” “Yes, yes of course I  will.” So off we trundle up the path and there   is this uh motor car there and she opens the boot  and we lift it open and there’s no body in there,  

There’s just a large wooden box with a brass  plate on it. “There he is” she said and I’m   looking and then I can read, it’s his ashes and  I said “I’m sorry I don’t quite understand.” She  

Says “You best come inside PC Hicks” and the  tears started to flood so I picked up husband,   put him under my arm, shut the boot of her car  and we walked back to their house. I made the tea,  

I sat her down and I says “What’s this all about?  When did your husband die?” “Oh he’s been dead   for two years now.” And I’m a bit confused, I said  “Well why are his ashes in the boot of your car?”  

She said “Oh there’s a big family dispute, it’s  my second marriage and the children from the first   marriage want him burying miles away and I’ll  have to pay so much money to get him across the   different parish boundaries to be buried in their  church, they won’t put any money towards it, so  

There’s this big family feud and they keep phoning  me up and they keep having a go and I don’t know   what to do with him.” Tears are flooding out so  I says “Right first of all you can’t keep him  

In the trunk, the boot of your car.” “Oh why  not?” “Somebody might steal your car.” “Ooh.”   I said “It would of course, you know, settle the  problem wouldn’t it?” And she actually smiled, now   we’re getting somewhere. So I said “Tell you what  we’ll do. Have you got a shovel?” “Yes.” I says  

“We’ll put him in a nice black bin bag and we’ll  bury him in the garden for now, then he’s safe,   nobody knows where he is and you can go and pay  your respects and when you move you can actually  

Take him with you, how does that sound?” Oh PC  Hicks, that’s a wonderful idea.” I says “Great,   all right then let’s do it.” So cup of tea,  couple of ginger nut biscuits later, we’ve buried  

The poor departed in the garden, that’s the ashes  shall we say, and she is so grateful and all I did   was contact the stepdaughter and I says, you know,  can you just ease off a little bit and uh she  

Complied because I used to go and check on the old  lady, but it just goes to show you, you never know   what’s around the corner when you’re a bobby on  the beat. The body in the boot. Well my next story  

Is interesting because I’d been given a motorcycle  by the police Thames Valley police, they realized   that I didn’t have one beat I had several. In  fact I had one, two, three, four. I had five  

Separate beats and uh it was quite a distance to  get to them so they give me a nice little Honda   125 motorcycle, no lights, no markings that it was  a police cycle but I had all of the gear the long  

Boots the helmet the goggles the whole business.  So I would patrol around, park up, leave my bike   and go and deal with whatever problem there was  and this one day it was quite early in the day I  

Think about 10:00 so the rush hour is just about  finishing, cuz my ground, my beat was just on the   very western side of London and there the normal  banter going on on the radio and I’ve got it  

Plugged into my ear in these days, we’re getting  progress there, and I hear a shout goes up. Horses   loose, running up and down the A40. Now the A40  was a main arterial road into London and there’s  

A full herd of horses galloping up and down and  panicking. I was about to reply that I’m 5 minutes   away when another policeman comes up “I’m on the  scene” he says. “All under control, I’ve got the  

Owner here, the gates open, we’re just herding the  horses into the field.” And I thought, great yeah?   No problems at all, so I get back on my motorcycle  and I’m heading in that direction anyway, I wasn’t  

Uh going to avoid it, I thought they might need an  extra hand when all of a sudden a panicked police   officer’s voice oh my goodness me comes over  the radio the owner had a heart attack I need  

Help the horses are back I need assistance and I  responded I was a matter of minutes away and as   I come down the road there a horse hes everywhere  traffic stopped the north orbital road going into   the A40 oh my goodness me pandemonium. Horns  are blaring, horses clippety clop and neighing  

And one police officer who looked a little bit  flustered bless him trying to herd the horses   and he shouted at me can you see to the owner can  you see to the man and then I look and over by the  

Entrance to the field is this man lying down and  when I looked at him his lips were bright blue   and I thought my goodness me I tried to feel for  a pulse I couldn’t find one straight away. You go  

Into the medic mode, compressions, mouth to mouth  in those days, all those kind of things and in no   time at all he came round and I thought wow.  Training kicks in, I sit him up bring his legs  

Up so that he’s comfortable and he starts to groan  and I oh my gosh what’s going on? Meanwhile horses   still running everywhere they’re trying to get  them in there’s more people helping now and he  

Starts to groan and I realize he’s trying to speak  and I’m leaning right into him I just can’t hear   he’s going, uurrgh, and I thought oh he’s trying  to give me his last words he thinks he’s going to  

Die, that’s what I genuinely thought. So I lean  right in and just as I lean right in I’ve put my   ear right next to his mouth I’m just managed to  pick out a few words from this poor man the words  

Were very simple “You’re standing on my foot.”  When I looked down with my great big motorcycle   boots I had leaned in on him to help him and I was  crushing his foot. Immediately I removed the foot,  

The ambulance which we’d already called turns up,  straight away they deal with him. It was a heart   attack, only a mild one, but enough and away he  goes. Now I didn’t think any more of it. I used  

To keep an eye on the field make sure nobody left  those gates open um and that was it until about,   I don’t know 3 four weeks later, I’m walking on  foot patrol just outside the shops there and this  

Gentleman runs up to me “Oh PC Hicks, PC Hicks!”  And I looked at him I says “Hello” and he threw   his arms around me and I was a bit perplexed cuz  I didn’t recognize him and he says “You saved my  

Life.” And I went “Oh now I recognize, you,  you’re not bright blue. How are you?” And we   laughed and he then stops all of the people on  the parade there where the shops were and says  

“This man saved my life.” And I looked at him  I said “Do you remember I was standing on your   foot?” And he says “It really hurt.” You never  know what’s going to happen on the beat. Now one  

Of the problems of being in the police force is  you’re always short of men and this one occasion   I was taken off the beat and put into a what we  called a panda car, a police car, together with  

The fellow officer Barry, uh we’ both been in  the Royal Military Police together so you had   the soldierly banter. We got on, still in fact do,  we’re still friends, get on like a house on fire,   and we’re minding our own business patrolling the  area don’t want anything to do with anybody cuz  

It’s cold out there, we’ve got our police great  coats on and our flat caps with the checkered   band and all of a sudden our call sign is called  up. Can you come to the police station? So we  

Think oh something’s going on and we turn up and  waiting for us is uh policeman with guns, whoa,   something out of Hollywood there they were with  their different guns and all their equipment and   there’s a superintendent there with them and we,  me and Barry, we’re kind of looking at them with  

Our scarves and our great coats and our flat hats  I say “Hello sir, uh what can we do for you?” And   he says “You two were in the Army weren’t you?”  And Barry and I look at each other wanting to  

Say no, no, but of course they knew we were  in the Army and they said we want you to do   a bit of tracking and sneaking up for us, and we  looked at them wide eyed, what there’s firearms  

And heavy drugs involved, it’s what you might  call a gypsy camp. “We want you to walk around   the woods come in the back and then we want to  see if you can look over the back fence, but  

You got to be careful cuz there’s lots of dogs”.  And the location where they were at, there’s 30   or 40 Vans trailers full of these people, some of  them I already knew could be very violent and the  

Thought, oh they’ve got firearms, right, right.  So off we go into the dark and it’s gone midnight   and it’s a dark old night and we go around the  back of the woods and we’re walking this way and  

We’re walking that, trying to find our way to this  perimeter fence at the back of this gypsy site,   scared that some of their dogs might be there  so I’d got my steel torch you know Maglite torch  

There, just in case. Barry was doing the same and  we get close to the fence the perimeter fence but   we can’t see over it, there’s so many bushes  and scrap iron and stuff there, so I say to  

Barry I says “Let’s move down this way.” And as I  says let’s move down this way, I fell down a hole   and I completely disappeared. Thwump! I was gone.  Barry now he’s “Kevin? Kevin where are you?” and  

I’m going “I’m down here,” He says “Down where?”  We’re both down the hole. So I help him up out   of the hole, he helps me back out of the hole and  we’re a little bit muddy and a bit smelly because  

The hole was used for other things, let’s not go  into details and then I come up with a great idea   I says “Let’s climb a tree.” But what I did was  I put my hands together and profer them to Barry  

And I says “Come on let’s climb a tree.” Barry  puts his foot into mine, I wouldn’t have done it,   and I lift him up into the tree. We should have  looked at the tree first because it wasn’t a nice  

Big tree, it was a very small tree and Barry goes  up the tree and the tree then goes over like this   suspending Barry halfway over the perimeter fence.  The dogs go berserk, Barry is screaming cuz he’s  

Upside down and there are dogs trying to bite him,  I’ve got both our Maglite torches in my pocket and   all Barry could see was two Maglite beams up in  the air as I ran into a tree. I eventually found  

Me way back to Barry, rescued him. As we pull out  of the woods the raid goes in. As we go around to   the front the senior officer waiting for us and  they’re going “Well done you distracted everybody,  

Well done for doing that.” And me and Barry looked  at each other slightly muddy, slightly smelly,   little did they know what really happened. So  this story is a little bit amusing but a little   bit sad at the same time as I’ve mentioned before  I often had to deal with death a tremendous amount  

Of death really and I got a routine call to an old  folks home, man had passed away. So I turn up and   there is the matron in fact “Oh hello Kevin” she  says I said “Oh right says is it Mrs Jones or Mr  

Jones?” She says “Mr Jones.” Before I went in she  says “Could you help us out ?” And I said “What’s   the problem?” “He’s, he’s passed away, he’s on the  toilet.” I says “Oh” “Um the doctor’s on his way,  

Could you do me a favor Kevin?” And I says  yes. She says “Mrs Jones is really upset, this,   this you know his trousers around his ankles the  deceased and it looks very embarrassing, he was a   dignified man, could you move him for us?” Well  as a police officer normally it’s other people  

Who do the moving of the bodies I’ve, I’ve moved  a few I will be honest but this particular kind of   case it was the undertakers would have moved him  and she says “Please” and I says “Yeah I will,  

I’ll go in and have a look.” And there sure enough  on the toilet there was a rather large, portly,   very overweight, elderly gentleman. As dead as  a door nail and there’s the smell of burning and  

I’m thinking well this is a bit weird and then I  realized he’d still got a cigarette in his hand   he was burning his hand so we got rid of that.  I radioed up for assistance and give a sketchy  

Excuse and along comes the exact same police  officer who was dealing with the horses on the   A40 road and he says to me he say what do you want  care I said well this is the problem and I showed  

Him the corpse and how on earth are we going  to move him? And I says right, brilliant idea,   we’ll get a blanket from the bedroom we’ll lay it  outside the toilet door. Now this was a very small  

Toilet and uh I said I will get behind him as best  I can push him you get to the side of him and then   push him out the door. He says brilliant. I says  then we can drag the blanket to the bedroom, hoist  

Him onto the bed, job done. Great, great idea he  says. So I get a little bit down the side and I’m   this close to the corpse it’s very unpleasant, but  hey the poor widow she was in bits, and as I put  

Me arm behind him the other policeman is ready  at the other side front and I push and I heaved   this guy so hard that he hit the other policeman  crushing him against the wall he’s letting out  

A scream the matron is “Everything all right PC  Hicks?” Yeah everything’s fine I said as we heave   this poor man out through the door . The other  policeman he, he called me a few names however  

We got him out onto the blanket and we hauled,  we hauled this man all the way across the hallway   into the downstairs bedroom and then we couldn’t  get him on the bed. I don’t know if you’ve ever  

Noticed this in any of your experiences, dead  people don’t help you they just lie there. How are   we going to get him from the floor onto the bed?  So two police officers stand on the edge of the  

Bed with the hand each of the deceased and we pull  him inch by inch until we finally get him onto   the bed, then drag him up the bed cover him over  with a quilt and the matron comes “Oh thank you PC  

Hicks” I said that’s okay. She says the doctor’s  on his way and the widow came in “Thank you” and I   went into the kitchen and matron and I had a cup  of tea and the proverbial couple of ginger nuts  

And the doctor turns up and he has me into the  bedroom cuz I’m the deputy Coroner’s officer as it   were, and he says um yeah I expected this. I says  all right, I said he was on the toilet. He says  

So matron explained and you move the body I says  yeah he said he got 10 fatal illnesses he says   I’ll sign the death certificate and then he showed  me the list of illnesses this guy had got and it  

Was quite amazing that he was it even lasted this  long but then the doctor looked at me and he says   so Kevin, we knew each other me and the doc and he  says uh how did you get him on the bed? And I said  

Says why’d you ask? He says well he wasn’t very  tall in life but he appears to be a bit longer   now, and when I explained that we dragged him he  says you’ve stretched him, don’t worry everything  

Will go back into shape in time for the funeral  I smiled and left, the undertakers can take him   away. I used to call in on the widow and she was  always eternally grateful for the two policemen  

Who gave her husband a little bit of dignity in  death. They’re all gone now so I can tell that   story because if they’d have known the whole story  they might not have been quite so grateful but  

Hey. So I’ve never forgotten the day I was given  a probationary Constable to assist with my duties   for a couple of weeks on the beat. What happens  is this, when you join the police you go through  

Police training police college and you keep going  back with and forwards but you also have to do   attachments and one of the attachments was being  attached to an area beat officer, that was me,   and I’ve got this young policeman this young  copper he’s enthusiastic, he’s dealt with a few  

Jobs no problems at all. We’re just going past  Denham shops, the parade there, we just almost   passed them and he turned to me and he says what  would you do Kev if a plane crashed now? And I   says don’t say things like that, don’t mention  train crashes, plane crashes, you never know  

What’s going to happen. You see there’d been a  train crash years before not very far away, fatal,   not very good and as we’re walking along my radio  suddenly barks into life “Alpha Charlie 25 Alpha   Charlie 25” and I went, “Go ahead over” “Plane  crashed Denham Airfield” and I almost says you’re  

Joking aren’t you. “Will you respond? I says  “Yeah.” We’d got a car not far away so I turned   and looked at my probationary constable and he  went “I’m sorry.” We get into the police car, blue  

Lights and away we go to Denham Airfield, only 5  minutes away, and sure enough a plane had crashed   but not just any plane it was a Blenheim Bomber  from the Second World War and this plane was right  

Across the 18th Fairway of Denham Golf Club, very  prestigious golf club, and we’ve parked in the   car park. I’ve walked over, the fire brigade of  turned up they’re dragging somebody who’s injured,   I think the pilot, and all of a sudden a golf  ball bounces off the wing. Ding! Straight past  

Me and I turn around and there is an elderly  gentleman a cravat, an open neck shirt all   the golf paraphernalia you can imagine with  the biggest handlebar mustache you’ve ever   seen. And I says “Do you mind? “Mind?” he says  “I’m playing through on the 18th Fairway, who’s  

Dumped that bloody plane there?” And I said, he  says “Well I saw what he tried to do, he tried to   touch down and come back. You don’t do that with a  Blenheim Bomber, I know that ’cause I flew them in  

The bloody war don’t you know.” He tucks his golf  club under his arm and storms off to get himself   a glass of whatever at the golf club. I laughed. I  was also sad because smashed up in front of me was  

A Second World War Blenheim Bomber, but you know  what? They took that plane away and they rebuilt   it. It’s still flying to this very day. So the  last story I’m going to give you, I actually get  

Hurt but it’s all to do with a mini riot, it was  actually classed as a riot, it’s a public order   thing. Two gangs of youths are fighting it out  outside a Chinese restaurant we’ve turned up,   I’m driving the riot van, but we weren’t the  riot police we were just ordinary Bobbies. It’s  

A Saturday night so we were, you know, heavy on  the ground, there was a few police officers there   as we turn up I can see there are already police  officers in amongst the gangs and they’re getting  

A bit of a kicking. One of the police officers was  one of our WPCs, one of our women police officers,   Claire, and she, somebody got around the neck so I  went straight in and and I simply took him out now   what people don’t realize about ex-military  police we’re trained in unarmed combat,  

Army unarmed combat but I’d had a second load.  I’d been in the army before and I’d been trained   in unarmed combat really well by a member of the  parachute regiment from the Second World War would  

You believe so I really knew my stuff. So I took  this guy down, took him out, put him in the back   of the wagon no problems at all. Then I saw our  sergeant, somebody was really trying to choke him  

So I took him out as well. This guy turned, had  to go at me, I put him down, drag him to the wagon   throw him in I then step into the wagon and as I  step into the wagon the first man I put in there  

Drop kicked me straight in the chest. Now next  to the entrance was already one policeman who’d   been hurt, he’d been kicked in the groin really  bad and he was quite poorly. What I didn’t know  

Was that kick to my chest had actually pushed my  chest in. I was Furious so I went into the back   of that wagon there and I subdued both of the  men that were fighting sat them down handcuffed  

Them properly the riot now subdues there are more  and more police driving more and more arrests are   being made. So I drive the wagon back to Amersham  police station because of the amount of people   we’d arrested. My chest was absolutely killing  me what I didn’t realize is my sternum have been  

Pushed into my heart and as I’m driving along  with the blue lights and the sirens, I passed   out at the wheel. I remember Dougie, the sergeant  there, leaning across and grabbing me and pulling   the handbrake and bringing everything to a halt  the next thing I remember was I’m being put into  

An ambulance and I wake up in hospital. What had  happened was my sternum had slowed my heart rate   down but then it had simply popped back out and  I was all right, I was bruised really quite badly   bruised. Well I did the paperwork, the statements,  the reports. The individuals had been charged with  

Assaulting a police officer and afray all that  kind of stuff and away it all goes. It took me for   a few weeks to recover actually from a severely  bruised chest and then I get a summons to appear  

In court and it’s a big deal. There are lots  of young men are up for the rioting, the afray,   and amongst it all there is the two for assaulting  police officers, the one who assaulted me, now  

His attorney at law, his barrister really did mean  business and he was trying to turn the whole thing   around and he kept pointing at me and saying “you  are certainly the one who did this who did that,  

And I can’t see how you could subdue my client”  and then he points to the accused who was at least   three or 4 inches taller than me and obviously  worked out a lot ’cause he was a bigger boy and I  

Then explained I said “well I’m trained in unarmed  combat” I says “both in the British Army and in   the police so I simply use that.” He said “I don’t  see how you could subdue him, I put it to you that  

You used violence against him other than that  that you’ve been trained to use,” And I went “No”   I said “If you wish I’ll show you exactly what I  did.” And you could have heard a stone drop in the  

Courtroom because it was packed and you then all  of a sudden seeing the three at the bench there   the judges suddenly go “oh this is interesting” I  says “All I need is somebody I can demonstrate on   your worships.” And they, everybody then looked  at the barrister and he went “I suppose I’ll have  

To volunteer then” And they gave me permission to  step down and I went down into the floor of the   court and I said “It’s very simple this is what  I did” and I put him into a, a goose neck and  

Hammerlock and bar and put him down on the ground  and then lifted him up and walked him around the   courtroom twice and his lovely words were “No  further questions you worships” and he went and  

Sat down and he looked at me as if to say ow my  arm hurts, but all it was, was police holds and I   showed him what. Just at that moment he had a word  with his client who changed his plea to guilty.

Well I hope you enjoyed that video of my times  when I was in the police if you did like,   share and subscribe and if you’d like to support  the channel a little further have a look at  

Our Patreon community the uh link is in the  description and I’ll tell you community it is we   have some fun. Now before I go I’d like to give a  shout out to some of those Patreon members we have  

Peter Keane and Mary Rees and Britt and Eli from  down under in Australia one of my favorite places   in the world of mine. My family have been going  there for many years some of them on a one-way   ticket courtesy of his Majesty’s government,  but that is a different story. Bye for now.