Watching The Detectives

The story of the police manhunt for The Fox - one of the most prolific offenders in British criminal history, told by the detectives who captured him. The criminal's activities spread through towns and villages across Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. Officers were taken off the hunt for The Yorkshire Ripper, and the picket lines of the miners' strike to head south and help apprehend this one-man crime wave

The story of the police manhunt for The Fox - one of the most prolific offenders in British criminal history, told by the detectives who captured him. The criminal's activities spread through towns and villages across Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. Officers were taken off the hunt for The Yorkshire Ripper, and the picket lines of the miners' strike to head south and help apprehend this one-man crime wave.

From being transported by the sound of 'True Love' by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly on the radio, as a small child living in condemned housing in ungentrified West London in the late 1950s, to going out to work as a postman humming 'Watching the Detectives' by Elvis Costello in 1977, Alan Johnson's life has always had a musical soundtrack. In fact music hasn't just accompanied his life, it's been an integral part of it.

Elvis Costello arrived as a sneering spitfire, the smartest and meanest singer/songwriter in the first wave of 1970s British punk backed by the Attractions, a band who could match his ferocity. Soon, Costello galloped away from the loud, fast rules of punk, demonstrating his musical and verbal facility with Armed Forces, a 1979 album that contained "Oliver's Army," "Accidents Will Happen," and his cover of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding," a trio of singles that turned into new wave standards. Such rapid musical evolution and switches in style became the rule in Costello's career, as he amassed a catalog that seemed to touch upon every conceivable genre of popular music.