There’s a long preview of Brian Paddick’s autobiography Line of Fire in today’s Mail on Sunday. The book will, the article says, “offer an insight into police culture and practice – from the era of Life On Mars to the era of the suicide bomber.”

Paddick is, of course, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Mayor in May’s London elections. His thirty years in the police force make him the ideal person to lead the fight against crime in London, and those three decades of experience are charted in his book, from the Brixton riots to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Here’s a morsel from the Mail:

Whenever I went out on night patrol with one particular pandacar driver, the first stop was the “tube station” – the off-licence.

We would buy a couple of “tubes” of Foster’s lager which we stowed under the front passenger seat. We would wait for a lull, go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and then sit in the car eating and drinking lager.

In those days the unofficial policy was to try to avoid arresting people for drink-driving – because police were drink-driving themselves.

Line of Fire is released on March 25th.