The TV-crime-drama police are just as puzzling in their behaviour as the civilians they interview. Aren’t they? The minute they twig something’s being kept from them, they launch into their passionate ‘We, the detectives, don’t care about most crimes’ routine. ‘Look, sir, we’re investigating a murder here. That’s all we care about: catching this killer. We don’t give a toss if you’ve parked illegally, or partaken of the contraband English Patient video. Just tell us what you know about this murder. If you’ve kerb-crawled, or lied about your age to buy booze or ciggies, we’re very chilled about that. Drugs? Do me a favour! Shoplifting, carjacking – all fine with us. Have you mugged an old lady, leaving her with severe head injuries? Try not to bore us, yeah? Like we could give a shit about some irrelevant old boiler.

‘Despite being employed to keep society safe from harm, we only actually want to solve one crime. We’ve decided, for some peculiar reason that is never elaborated upon, that none of the others count. We’re the police equivalent of a lollipop lady who’s determined to usher one kid safely across a road while ignoring the dozens falling under the wheels of SUVs nearby. Tell you what, I’ll cut you a deal: give me something, anything, that’ll take me one step closer to catching this killer – the only criminal on the planet I care about, even though that’s utterly irrational – and I’ll grant you immunity for all your other crimes, like the baby you strangled, and the fire you started in which eight nurses died.’

‘I still can’t risk telling the truth,’ thinks the narcissistic suspect with no sense of perspective. ‘I’ve been assured by the most eminent superintendent in the land that I could have melted my neighbour in a cauldron of boiling wax and he’d totally let me off, but there’s still no way of predicting how annoyed he might be about the whole English Patient thing. Nope, that’s a tough one to call. Better play it safe and say nothing.’

In my first real-life experience of this kind of situation, I gleaned a perverse satisfaction from giving up my shocking secret straight away. Truth is, I felt a little bit ashamed to be involved with the police in the role of boring goody-two-shoes who’d done nothing wrong, so I decided to try and annoy them. A detective’s job is to ferret out what people are hiding, so how irritating must it be for them when someone’s opening gambit is ‘Let me tell you everything’? Imagine how furious Jamie Oliver would be if he opened his oven on Christmas Day and found a perfectly cooked turkey with all the trimmings in there that someone else had prepared earlier; it must be like that.