`MOVE, AND WE BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF'

in both Britain and America. He compares the two experiences

`HELLO THERE, my friends!' I said. The two men stared at me. One had a shaved head, the other a small moustache. They wore regulation jeans, trainers and bad- tempered scowls. They were not in fact friends of mine. But it seemed sensible to say something. I had just got off a train. It was the middle of the afternoon. Stoke Newington station was empty — except for these two large black gentlemen blocking the stairs out.

They were surprised at being addressed. `Er — hello, man,' said the one with the shaved head.

I was now within 15 feet of the stairs. They still blocked the exit. 'After you!' I said cheerfully, in an attempt to disguise my fear now that the two them had started to close in on me.

`Oh, no, man,' the shaved head one said, `after you.'

`Honestly,' I responded in my best more- tea-vicar manner, 'I really would rather you went up the stairs first . .

The debate looked set to go on because the smaller one frowned and said, `No, man, you . .

But the one with shaved head cut him off. 'You're not going anywhere,' he growled, 'not until you've paid the tax! You gotta pay us the tax!'

They both looked as if they meant it. They also both looked as if they deserved a right-arm jab to the belly followed by a vio- lent kick in the balls. But both of my legs were injured. I couldn't kick anything — or run away, come to that. Karate was out. And so was escape. I was stuck. All I could do was explain that I was not going to pay their 'tax', which was, like most taxes, total- ly illegitimate, a forced seizure of what was rightfully mine. I felt I was persuading them of the injustice of what they planned to do when they both jumped on me.

`Give us all your fucking money! Where's your fucking money? Give us it!' The shaved head pulled off my watch whilst the moustache put an arm round my neck and stuck something sharp in my back — it felt like a knife, but it could just possibly have been a screwdriver, but either way, I wasn't eager to find out. So I merely repeated, 'I don't have any money!' several times. Neither of them believed me. They went through my pockets, my bag, my wallet and my diary, and found a lot of pieces of paper, some receipts, a few credit cards, and a lot of junk. There was a crumpled £5 note in amongst all the rub- bish. They weren't pleased.

`What's your PIN number?' the shaved head said, as he inspected my banker's card. I told him I didn't have one. He dropped the card in disgust. 'Where's your car?' the moustache said. I told him I didn't have a car. He angrily threw my keys on to the railway track. I then cleared my throat and asked for my watch back. The big one with the shaved head was so startled by the request that he actually handed it back to me. Then they both scampered off. They had failed to notice the 150 dollars in cash I had amidst the receipts and useless bits of paper. I picked up my credit cards and papers, and staggered home. `Stay in your fucking car!' one of them shouted. 'Move, and we blow your fucking head off!' It sounded like dialogue from a bad film, but those guns were real, and terri- fying. I dutifully sat motionless at the wheel, rigid with fear, wondering what I could do to convince these lunatics to spare my life.

One of them then informed the others that he was 'going to go and get' me. He came across to my car, opened the door, and put his gun to my temple. 'Don't give me any trouble,' he said. He pulled me out of the car and put me in an arm-lock, then had me spread-eagled on the back of the car. 'Let's see what he's got,' one of them said. They went through my diary, my wal- let, my pockets, emptying their contents until they found my driving licence.

Because these men weren't robbers. They were traffic police. As they very cour- teously explained when they discovered I was English, they had merely been follow- ing official guidelines when they forced me off the road and terrified the life out of me by pointing loaded guns up my nose. `So many of us have been shot trying to stop speeding cars,' one of them told me, 'we have to be very careful.' They then fined me $700 for being nearly 40 miles per hour over the 55 m.p.h. speed limit — which made an encounter with the Oregon High- way Patrol much more expensive, and far more frightening, than bumping into a cou- ple of Stoke Newington muggers.

[19TToMS • UP

The place to buy a case.

biscount

(That's 12 bottles). 30th October 1994.

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Lelephone No. Nn s w/1/v+ AT LAST YEAR'S Spectator summer party, Charles Anson, otherwise known as the Queen's press secretary, came up to me and suggested I come on Her Majesty's forthcoming visit to Russia. Someone put round the idea that I was a 'constitutional expert', under which mantle I stowed away happily.

But once in Russia I was generally horri- fied by the way the press longed for things to go wrong. Equally, though, they conced- ed defeat when they had to. An example of this was the curious Red Square walka- bout, when the Russian police held most corners at bay. It looked for a while as though the Queen had only met foreign tourists but it was conceded, not without sorrow, that she had after all met some Russians. I heard one journalist saying to another, 'She definitely did meet some Russians, unfortunately.'

The 'Manchester' incident was the royal rat pack's happiest moment. It was gleaned on the Queen's visit to St Petersburg Uni- versity, when a student, Galina Gusarova, alleged that the Queen had said to her that St Petersburg was nicer than Manchester. The royal reporters' London colleagues duly rang up the stars of Coronation Street to get their views. None of the journalists actually heard her say it, they only heard young Galina's report, and there may have been numerous ramifications lost in trans- lation. Yet the excitement this caused at pooling time was enormous, with one hack crying out, 'The Queen's finally cracked. She's dumped on Manchester! First it was Di, then Charles, and now the Queen get- ting it wrong! Don't you see, it's the first blunder of her reign?'

On day one, the hacks turned their rheumy eyes onto Prince Philip. He must be livid about the Dimbleby book, they thought. There was general agreement that Prince Philip looked old and tired, the implication being that he was indeed dis- tressed by the first instalment. In fact, Prince Philip, now aged 73, is a very fit man, agile and mentally alert, looking a great deal younger than his years. My theo- ry is that none of the press had looked closely at him for some years and inevitably he was older than their image of him.