Autobiography

usker named Glen, who would simply fill in for
me while I did the bookwork, and I would pay
him a commission on his sales.
At that time it wasn’t the police I had trouble
with so much as the council; what we would
now call Trading Standards. I was regularly
hauled up in front of the local magistrate and
fined £10 for Sunday and late night trading.
Every time this happened, I paid up and
continued working. Had it been a serious law
with any depth of meaning the fines would
have increased each time, but they didn’t.
They were like modern-day traffic wardens and
could have put me out of business by charging
me every day, but the magistrates never
increased the fine and seemed to understand
when I explained that this was my business,
how I earned my living. Here was a crime with
no victim, and it was to plague me for a good
deal of my working life.
Whenever I was arrested for selling so-called
pornography, it was the same. Who was the
victim? Certainly not the person buying the
product.
If I asked a 100 people who had driven along a
motorway at four in the morning, hands up all
those who drove at no more than 70 miles-anhour?
I doubt if many hands would go up. So
all those people thought the law was an ass as
well. The 70 miles-an-hour limit was
introduced 40 years ago when there was no
MOT, no ABS breaking systems and minimal
street lighting. The cars and motorways have
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