When Celebrities Go Nuts (Part One)

Whilst many actors are completely unlike the characters they portray on screen - John le Mesurier, for instance, who portrayed mild-mannered bank-clerk and Home Guard Sergeant in the popular 1970s BBC sitcom Dad’s Army was revealed by a TV documentary to have been a dope smoking sex-maniac in real-life - others sadly confuse their screen personas with real-life. Whilst it is well-known that Jack Lord refused to film a thirteenth season of Hawaii Five-O unless producers allowed him to use real bullets in his gun, less known is the fact that British actor Jack Warner - who played PC George Dixon, the avuncular title character of long-running BBC police series Dixon of Dock Green - would frequently wander around Soho wearing his police costume, propositioning prostitutes on the pretext the he was “pursuing sensitive enquiries”. “At first we thought we was a real copper, trying to get a special rate”, says Brenda Blower, who worked the Soho area as a prostitute in the early 1970s. “A lot of that sort of thing went on in those days - the Vice Squad were notorious for ‘taking you in for questioning’ then letting you off after a free ‘knee trembler’ in the cells”.

Indeed, one of Warner’s favourite opening gambits involved cautioning prostitutes that they’d been a “naughty girl” and proceeding to frisk them in their back alley. “He’d often then claim that he had a warrant to search your premises and insist you took him to your flat”, recalls Blower. “Once there he’d start playing games - sometimes he’d be the good cop, others the bad cop. When he was the bad cop he’d handcuff you, then whip out his huge truncheon and try and menace you with it by slapping it repeatedly into the palm of his hand. He’d also do tricks with it, twirling it around and such like - it was always very well oiled! Finally, he’d make you squat down on his big blue bobby’s helmet.” When playing the good cop Warner would apparently get the prostitutes to strip naked, then make them a nice cup of tea. “When he was ready to have sex himself he’d stand stark naked in the middle of the room with his striped policeman’s duty armband hanging from his knob”, According to Blower, who also claims that Warner had some peculiar sexual preferences. “He’d insist you blew his big shiny policeman’s whistle as you climaxed - the noise was deafening, as he’d insist on imitating a police siren as he ejaculated!” The much-loved TV cop would, allegedly, sometimes prefer to take a submissive role, paying prostitutes to dress as policewomen and handcuff him naked to radiator before beating him with a lead-filled length of hose.