This post is not what you think. This isn’t a tale of writer’s block and the desperate struggle to fill empty pages. Through the years, I’ve written fairly steadily; comedy, children’s, fantasy, factual drama, but never stories that involve the police, police stations and crime. Until now.

I trace it back to a traumatising experience on the writing nursery slopes when I was being considered for The Bill, a UK TV programme, now sadly axed, that developed many new and terrific writers.

Before you...