Now Where Was I.........?

Oh yes......trying to ascertain what on earth the Football Fanatic had been doing all morning.

FF: Mum, what's the panic? I've got twelve missed phone calls and three texts from Ryan.

Enter Ryan, stage left.

Ryan is a good friend of the Football Fanatic.

Ryan lives with Jack. Remember Jack?

Well, not 'lives with' obviously. Shares a flat with.

Actually, at the moment shares a villa in Spain with, because that's where they've both gone to open a new nightclub, but I digress....

(Yes, Jack's still around. And don't be fooled by the fact that he's living in Spain. He nips back to watch home matches and take the Football Fanatic out with alarming regularity).

Back to Ryan. Ryan knows a lot about police procedure. He's been in a lot of police stations.

Put bluntly, Ryan likes a good fight. Not a dirty fight, you understand, just the lager-and-testosterone-fuelled Saturday night sort of fighting that young men have indulged in for generations.

Ryan uses a police van on a Saturday night like other people use a taxi home. In fact Jack was once heard to say that if Ryan sees a Tactical Aid Unit in the city and he's not in it, he feels like he's missed out.

In short, Ryan knows how long it takes to give a witness statement.

Text 1 (11.30): Are you out yet? How did it go? Ryan

Text 2 (12.00) What's going on? Are you still in there? Ryan

Text 3 (12.30) WHERE ARE YOU? I've been arrested, questioned, charged and out on bail in less time than this....

The Football Fanatic maintained that she had just been talking to the policeman.

Talking him to death more like. For an incident which took approximately two minutes, the poor policeman was required to write EIGHT A4 SHEETS of paper, which was her account of what had happened.

At one point, she drew him a floor plan. Not a floor plan of the hotel where the incident took place, but a floor plan of the department store, outlining where everybody works, how everybody is inter-related and probably who fancies who.

About an hour into the interview, another police officer actually came into the room to check whether everything was okay. The poor officer taking the statement was probably so dazed at this point that he wanted to shout 'HELP ME' but couldn't actually form the words.

Obviously, I cannot write the entire transcript of the interview, but here are a few little gems:

PC: Had everybody had a lot to drink?

FF: Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I hadn't. Not at £8 for a vodka and coke, anyway. I'd had two drinks. I think I've still got the bill somewhere.....it actually says a single and a double, but everybody tasted it and we all agreed there's no way that was a double.....

PC: So what happened then?

FF: Well, I went in to get Karen and Sheila.......Sheila from Shoes, that is, not Sheila from Menswear......and I told them what had happened but no-one believed me, so I explained the whole thing again and then Sheila said 'Come on, our Emma, get your coat'.....because Sheila's Emma's mother.....did I already tell you that?

PC: It takes quite a lot of force, you know, to push someone down a flight of stairs.......

FF: Oh no. Not those two. They're only about seven stone each.....which by the way, is my target weight.......

PC: And then?

FF: Well, I knew it was bad because she was lying there at the bottom of the stairs and her leg was at a funny angle, and so was her arm. But I'll tell you how I really knew it was bad......when she fell, her dress flew up and she had black knickers on....and there's no way she would have carried on lying there with her knickers showing if she hadn't been really hurt........

Shall I carry on?

I thought not.

But you get the picture, don't you?

I can honestly say that Bootle Street nick have never been more glad to get rid of anyone in their entire history.

Jack came home from Spain for her birthday and spent the next two days shaking his head in disbelief at the amount of drivel she had actually come out with.

In the end though, we did come up with a positive slant on the situation.

In the event that the Football Fanatic ever does get in trouble with the police on a Saturday night, they will radio her name through to the desk, and a sergeant with a modicum of common sense may well radio back:

For God's sake, don't bring her in.

We'll be here three weeks.