An email has zoomed around the world and popped into my inbox – which admittedly would be more impressive if it hadn’t been sent by the person sitting next to me.

It links to a clip on YouTube featuring yesterday’s debate between London mayoral candidates Boris Johnson and Brian Paddick on the BBC Asian Network (pop fact: I went to primary school with one of the Asian Network’s presenters).

Boris tries to label Brian (who has three decades’ experience in the police force) as soft on crime – only to have to eat his words once challenged.

Here’s the clip:

I like the “Brian Paddick is the only candidate with a proven record of fighting crime” bit at the end – it makes him sound like Batman. Meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor…

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.

An email from Vince Cable has popped into my inbox to tell me that former Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick has been selected by party members in London to be the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor.

Congratulations to Brian on his selection.

You can sign up for news from his campaign at www.brianpaddick.org.

Update: Here’s the BBC story and the announcement on the party website.