They Came At Dawn

Pundit arrested (finally)

Pundit: Doing a runner

Redknapp: In need of rolling pin

Policewoman: Must stay at least 100 yards away from

Funny old thing, Football. For instance, police raids. I had my first on Thursday last. Gave me the willies, I can tell you.

Cornered

There were about a hundred of them. Armed, and with dogs. Fair enough though — Mrs Pundit and I are in our seventies now, and you know what septuagenarians are like when they're cornered. Searchlights poured through our bedroom window, making a light show of Mrs Pundit's curlers. Loud hailers suggested we might want to get up and let them in, if that was all right with us.

Nine stretch

We duly obliged. Bleary-eyed, pungent, unshaven - Mrs Pundit is never at her best in the mornings (the less generous may remark she's not up to much in the afternoons). She let the rozzers in and they marched behind her in a line to the kitchen — where she promptly laid out the first one with her trusty rolling pin and down they went like dominos, the first falling on the second, the second on the third, until nine coppers were stretched out all in a line, cartoon birds tweeting over their heads.

Prostrate

At which point a plain clothes copper sighed, picked her way carefully over the prostrate bodies of her colleagues, gently extracted the rolling pin from Mrs P, felled her with a blow to the head and started to ask me some questions.

Inducements

Turned out the police assumed I'd been taking "bungs" for some of the things I'd been saying in recent commentaries — they said they couldn't imagine anyone advancing half those opinions without bribery. Fortunately, half an hour with me convinced them every word I said was my own. Off they went again, blue lights whirling uselessly like a defender trying to mark Ronaldo. Been meaning to replace the front porch anyhoo.

Keep yer noses clean,

Johnny Pundit