Some stories are just too much like scenes from a novel. In this case an early Kingsley Amis.
J.P.R. Williams, a celebrated Rugby international from my youth and now a 61-year-old orthopaedic surgeon, is stopped by police and breathalysed. But he has a bright idea. Someone, somewhere, has told him that you can cheat the test by putting copper coins in your mouth. The problem is that it's an idea that you need to be drunk to believe. The further problem is that PC Plod tends to get suspicious if you start shoving small change into your mouth. The even further problem is that it doesn't work.
He's been banned from driving for seventeen months. They should also make him take a GCSE in Chemistry.
Reading this scene in the manuscipt of a novel, an editor would surely object: funny idea, but do we have to make him a doctor? Nobody is going to believe that.
If only J.P.R. had read the entry on the subject in the great urban legends website, snopes.com.
Comments