Steve’s Memories of a Mancunian Bobby (Big Les)

Big Les was called ‘Big Les’ because he was big.

He was 6 foot three and weighed, well he weighed quite a lot. He wore size 13 boots.

I was refuelling the police van at Platt Lane police station, it was a J4 automatic with sliding doors. We loved them, easy to drive and fling about.

Big les had bad feet and took every opportunity to reminding people of his long standing problem, no pun intended there.

‘Hiya Steve’ he said in his deep booming voice everything about Big Les was big, his hands were huge, and I’d seen his fists in action but that’s yet another story.

Les was a member of Dixons Dodgers. of which I’ll tell you about another time.

‘Can you give me a lift’ Les asked me,

‘Of course’ I said, we were mates. ‘where to I asked?’,
‘Only to Hall Lane’, he replied
‘No problem I’m going there anyway’. Hall Lane was another station in the Wythenshawe area of South Manchester.

I filled the tank and Les got in, the van groaned.

We set off,
The route was to go down Princess Road onto Princess Parkway and on to Hall lane. Princess Road was a 40 miles per hour dual carriage-way, it had then several huge roundabouts at the numerous major junctions all covered with flowers it was really very pretty.

Then the planners, just out of university got hold of it – it’s now like every other road in the country, they got rid of the roundabouts and its now like spaghetti concrete junction.

Anyway we set of turning onto the dual carriage-way, we were in no rush so I kept to around 30.

Now in them days the police had a fair amount of respect, and no-one ever overtook a police car or van. consequently whenever you saw a police car there was the inevitable tail back of traffic behind it.

Les was telling me about his feet and we got to the first roundabout at Barlow Moor Road our intention was to carry straight on, but as I entered the roundabout out of the corner of me eye I saw Les wobble.
The van began to turn into the roundabout Les wobbled more then suddenly fell onto me wedging his huge frame between me and the steering wheel.

‘Get up Les you daft sod’ I shouted
‘I can’t’ he replied ‘I’m stuck’
I shouted again, the steering wheel was stuck as we headed round the roundabout, I couldn’t move my legs and my left foot was stuck on the accelerator.

Les began to wobble uncontrollably as he began to laugh, ‘get up get up’ I shouted, but that made him laugh even more

This was now our fifth time round the roundabout

All the vehicles wanting to enter the roundabout had stopped, the police van they deduced was instrumental in stopping the traffic for some emergency about to happen.

No we weren’t. I was stuck and Les was laughing.

Round and round we went

Drivers were out of their vehicles, what’s going on, something going down.

The only thing that was down was big Les, and he had his head in my crotch, and I never thought I ever to say that.

Eventually I managed to get an arm free and began to push Les up, slowly he began to raise his bulk sufficient for me to move my foot off the accelerator to the brake.

I brought the van to a stop.

A black cab driver who had been at the front of the line of traffic walked over to us

‘You OK’ he asked,.

Les’ fat red face was streaming with tears as he was still laughing, then he put his hand to his mouth and said in a gummy booming voice ‘where me teeth Steve?’.

His eyes went to my crotch where I too looked only to see Les’ false teeth between my legs.

Well that set him off again, can you pass them to me he said.

Now there posed a problem a very real dilemma, do I handle Les’ false teeth or do I let him grope about in my crotch with his huge fat sausage like fingers?.

What do you think I did?