‘Can a man be legally questioned in front of you if he’s been kept awake a few days?’ I asked.

  ‘In the UK, yes. In Europe, less so, and it would be against the law and the various UN conventions.’

  ‘So how do you justify statements made in court by someone that’s very tired?’

  ‘The police and the courts believe that a tired man is less likely to think up a clever lie. On the flip side of that, the man may fail to mention something important in his defence because he’s very tired.’

  ‘Doc Lepus, is it torture?’

  ‘Under the UN charter you cannot keep a suspect awake for a few days and badger him with questions, that is torture, yes.’

  ‘So, police officers of Britain, I am formally accusing you of torture, EU and UN action to follow, as well as some High Court legal action. So be warned.

  ‘Justice Cavendish, if police officers let a non-drunk get a good night’s sleep, does that mean the police lose their unfair advantage?’

  ‘It is a bit unfair, to keep a suspect awake, yes, but if that man has a good night’s rest he can explain himself better and remember detail better, like the name of an alibi.

  ‘Should the police keep a suspect awake for days on end? No, of course not. But we understand why they do it, they do it because of all the people that complain about deaths in police cells.

  ‘And when you look at an analysis of those deaths they generally come down to a drunk drowning on his own vomit or a drug addict having a heart attack – neither reason being a cause for complaint against the police.’

  ‘I agree, and I have my medical bay to separate the police work from the nurse-maiding. But we then have the white collar worker being kept awake, when he was arrested at 9am and not drunk.’

  ‘In that case it would be wrong to keep him awake, yes, since he has no risk of drowning on his own vomit, and has not taken drugs. It’s just that when it comes to the police … old habits die hard.’

  I cut in, ‘Taxpayers of Britain. You need to be aware that if you’re arrested, by mistake or otherwise, you will be thrown into a bare cell with a hard concrete shelf and a basic rubber mat, and you’ll be woken up every fifteen minutes.

  ‘Do you have any rights? No, of course not, this is the British police we’re talking about, and they stick to the rules only after losing legal action to people like me. Why would they lift a finger till after they get ruled against in the courts?

  ‘But take heart that I will be addressing the matter, a lengthy court battle and some political pressure, and then – maybe – things will be less third-world in British police cells. But don’t hold your breath, especially if you’re black.

  ‘And if there’s anyone listening to this who knows anything about what went on in Ireland in the decades gone by then please get in touch with my legal team, or just send the story to the tabloids.

  ‘The new commission in Dublin has been established, they are mostly women I hear, so there should be less of a conspiracy going on, and there are EU representatives involved as well.

  ‘I have a provisional list of suspected priests in Ireland, as well as in Britain, and I have sent it to the Vatican, the priests to be dismissed from the church with a good kick up the backside for good measure.

  ‘And let’s be clear about one thing here tonight, and that’s the free Press that we have in Britain, the good old tabloids.

  ‘We like to criticise them when they go too far and make fun of our politicians a bit too harshly, they even made fun of a vicious wolf-like dog attacking me on “Have I Got News For You”.’

  My guests smiled.

  ‘But the simple fact is … that the tabloids are protecting our democracy far more than Parliament is, far more than the police and the courts.

  ‘When rich and powerful people get up to no good … it’s the tabloids that bring them down, not our politicians or the police. I had the help of the tabloids with Roger Pearson, and with other issues, and it’s them that I rely upon when innocent black men are sent to prison.

  ‘I don’t turn to our elected politicians, and I definitely don’t turn to the police – who might want to shoot me, I turn to the tabloids to expose the truth, to shine a light on the conspiracy.

  ‘I don’t know quite what happened to the free Press in Dublin these past fifty years, but I would like to just say to the media there: rot in hell, scumbags.

  ‘Because this scandal would have been exposed in Britain by the tabloids on day one, the free-from-interference tabloids, and the matter would have been dealt with.

  ‘Maybe someday … Ireland will have a free Press and some decent reporters, and we all wait for that day, because then we’ll know that Ireland has a democracy, whereas at the moment … what they have is a hell of a long way away from being a democracy.

  ‘Justice Davenport. Do you hate or like our tabloids?’

  ‘I’ve wanted to shoot a few of them from time to time, and they often go too far, but if you compare our bad old hacks to those in Ireland, then at least ours get the truth out there.

  ‘Our hacks bring down governments and expose corruption, so there’s a big question mark hanging over the Dublin newspapers and just what they were doing, other than sleeping on the job.

  ‘Were they influenced by the government of Ireland, were their editors and directors having dinner with the various government ministers, a cosy club?

  ‘Whatever went on, it was not operating as a free and fair media, as you might hope for in a modern democracy. Step one is a free Press, step two is an independent judiciary, and step three is a functioning democracy free from corruption.

  ‘Given what you exposed, they seem to be at step zero and waiting to start a democracy over there in the backwaters and the bogs.’

  ‘Ouch, that will hurt in the morning,’ I joked. ‘But we may just wake them up in the sleepy Irish media. And who knows, maybe some of them will print the inconvenient truth at long last.

  ‘Doctor Lepus, Justice Cavendish, thanks for coming on, and I’m glad that we avoided anything controversial tonight.

  ‘Citizens of Britain, sleep well – with a chair up against your door as usual, then in the morning check your Traffic Jam devices before planning any long journeys because our motorways are often blocked by accidents and roadworks. Goodnight.’

  The music started.

  Doc Lepus noted, ‘They’ll feel the pain in Ireland in the morning for sure, but they were asleep on the job.’

  I thanked my contributors and handed them both five hundred quid for petrol, and they set off in different directions.

  Pat and Dingle had been listening in a side room, and they were now all grins as we left the building.

  ‘Avoided the controversial stuff, yeah,’ Pat noted.

  Part Two

  I was back at the radio station the next day, the Irish media now getting a tonne of shit from the world’s media.

  Justice Cavendish was back, as well as Doc Lepus, and we sipped cups of tea as we settled. My guests had been briefed this morning on tonight’s topics, so they were prepared.

  ‘We now hand you over to Ricky Roskov, who may discuss controversial topics, otherwise known as … telling the truth that others hide. Ricky.’

  ‘This is Ricky Roskov, Radio Leicester, and welcome to our listeners from around the UK, and I hope that no one is offended by hearing the truth.

  ‘Just kidding, because of course I don’t care if you’re offended by hearing the truth, we need some changes in this country and we won’t get them by pretending that everything is OK – this is not Ireland.’

  My co-hosts smiled widely and shook their heads.

  ‘First off, I just want to mention to the AIDS sufferers of Britain that our first AIDS hospice will be opening soon outside of Leicester, staff are being recruited, tea bags bought, and the fish in the pond are waiting for people to stare at them.

  ‘So let me make myself clear to late-stage AIDS sufferers what you’ll get in Leicester. You’ll get a welcome, and you’ll get a comfy place to live behind a high fence and some trees, and no one will ever reach you unless you want to take a trip outside.

  ‘You will, first and foremost, be safe, and no one will be judging you, all of the residents in the same boat, the staff used to dealing with your medical condition, staff that want to help you.

  ‘But we’ll also build a large AIDS hospice in south London, that one to be ready in a year or more, and it will have similar aspects to it - but not a lake and a park and trees and a high fence, it will be a city hospice.

  ‘So if you like green trees and walks in the park you could try the one in Leicester, if your relatives can visit you there.

  ‘I’m also about to build a few Three-Phase foster homes in Leicester, for which we hope to get a license, and these new style foster homes will deal with good kids that need a home, but also bad kids that need to be locked away.

  ‘If the good kids behave badly they’ll get moved to Phase Two and Three – a bare cell to sit in. If the bad kids behave well they can be moved towards Phase One, a reward system. Simple.

  ‘OK, first topic tonight is the death of the High Street. As you all know, from visiting your High Street, the buzz has gone and the shoppers now prefer to shop out of town at Tescos, which is more convenient.

  ‘It’s no one’s fault that people shop out of town by car, and the traditional High Street was a concept that evolved a few hundred years ago, our High Streets often having some very old buildings in them.

  ‘So the problem is … that fewer people shop in the High Street and that the shops are closing down. We now see shops boarded-up, we see more cheap shops appearing, and the quality shops are disappearing.

  ‘If nothing is done … then the High Street will contain only pubs, solicitors and estate agents, and little else, people shopping out of town for their food as well as their household items.

  ‘What I’ve started to do here in Leicester … is to buy up the old buildings and to convert the upper floors to apartments, and even a protected environment place for pensioners is being created in one large old building.

  ‘Old people like the city centre, and they generally don’t drive. Young people and students also like the city centre, and they can’t afford to drive – not in this country.

  ‘So the aim is that hundreds of people move into these new apartments and shop local, use the local cafes and local bars, and that we breathe some life back into the good old British High Street.

  ‘Justice Cavendish, where did you shop as a kid?’

  ‘My mother would take me to our local High Street, and it was the busiest place in Darlington, Yorkshire, where we lived, and in those days there was no such thing as out of town shopping.

  ‘And when I visited the old town a few months ago it was a shock, to see so few people in the High Street, shops boarded up – and plenty of homeless people sleeping in the shop doorways as well.

  ‘But it is an inevitable change, because people do prefer these out of town superstores; more choice and easier to get to.’

  ‘Doc Lepus, you spent a great deal of time abroad…’

  ‘I did, and the shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur are huge, clean, and they have everything you might want, not much in the way of local shopping there.

  ‘My original home town here was Swindon, and that has changed a great deal – for the worse I’m afraid. My last trip there was to dodge the homeless and to avoid the violent druggies in the main shopping area.

  ‘But my wife is from Derby, and I spent my early medical career in these parts, Nottingham mostly, and the change to Derby’s High Street was a shock.

  ‘They say that time moves on, yes, but in this case the High Street has grown old and isolated, not much love for it now, just bookmakers and charity shops.

  ‘So your idea of renovating the old buildings is much needed it seems, to breathe some life back into a dying High Street, but I had to wonder – why are you doing that and not the local council?

  ‘I mean, it’s not rocket science, you just renovate the buildings and attract young people and old people. Simple. Is there no council planning … for the future of our towns and cities?’

  I began, ‘You’d think there was, but obviously not. The Government employs some very smart people allegedly, all highly paid and with a fantastic pension paid at age fifty-five, yet they never saw the problem and never planned for it, all asleep on the job.

  ‘The problem was facing us all as we ventured to our High Streets, and the solution is obvious as well, yet nothing was done by our Government or local councils – till now.

  ‘I have a good working relationship with Leicester Council, and they’re assisting me greatly in many areas, one being the regeneration of our good old High Street.

  ‘Within six months I will have added at least a thousand people to the High Street, living right on the High Street, the hope being that they go shopping on that High Street, they use the cafes and they frequent the bars.

  ‘I’ve also started that very same process in Nottingham, and will soon start on Derby and Coventry. And you can be sure that I won’t lose money in the process, because we’ll rent out the apartments we create and get back our investment slowly.

  ‘And the next Labour Government has already pledged itself to investing in High Street regeneration, whereas the current government has done little apart from grant any superstore that wants an out of town license to have one.

  ‘But coming back to my AIDS hospice. Doc Lepus, what has been the policy – since AIDS arrived – in helping people with AIDS?’

  ‘Well, I have no idea if there is a coherent nationwide policy because I’ve never heard of one as such. We have cancer hospices, and we have isolation hospices for contagious diseases, but up to now the AIDS sufferer has either lived at home or taken up a hospital bed.’

  I cut in, ‘And in an ideal world … what should we do to help them?’

  ‘We should do what we did with cancer, and create dedicated hospices, as you’re starting to do, and from the standpoint of a doctor with an eye on costs – it saves a great deal of taxpayers’ money to have them all together in large specialist hospitals.

  ‘It helps the sufferers and it helps the taxpayers, a win-win situation, and to have them in a nice country park with a fence around them is a God send, because there is a stigma attached to AIDS, and people here are not that friendly towards our gay population.

  ‘So having an AIDS hospice in an isolated country park is brilliant, and the place we now have could hold six hundred patients in some peace and comfort.

  ‘And I’ve spoken with local NHS managers who can’t wait for it to open, because they each have twenty beds tied up by a long-term sufferer that can’t go home and … where the heck else do you send them?’

  I cut in, ‘Just for those interested … we have women and children coming to the AIDS hospice as well, and I was shocked when they told me that we would see kids coming.

  ‘Those kids, they were born to drug addicts with AIDS, and … will survive ten to twelve years at best, which … came as a bit of a kick in the stomach, to sit down and think about it.

  ‘And yes, there is still a stigma with the disease, but to catch it you need to have sex with an infected person a few times at least, or share a needle just the once.

  ‘And if there was ever a reason to try and deal with our homeless druggies sharing needles … this is it, because someone infected with the disease will cost the NHS countless millions in treatment, treatment that can last ten years or more.

  ‘Justice Cavendish, can we legislate against and lock up drug addicts that live reckless lives?’

  ‘Many in this country would like to, trust me, because the drug addict sleeping rough and re-using needles is spreading fatal diseases about the country.

  ‘If that man had Ebola you could be damn sure that something would be done, but as it stands … we let them sleep in the parks and the shop doorways, diseased and dying yet sharing needles with others.

  ‘Can we arrest someone for living rough? Technically … yes, that’s vagrancy. Arrest them for sharing a needle? No, no law against stupidity.’

  I cut in, ‘And in an ideal world?’

  ‘In an ideal world … they would all be grabbed as soon as they start to inject … and then treated in a programme. To just leave them to their own devices is ludicrous, and the crime and the spread of fatal diseases is rampant at the moment.’

  I cut in, ‘And do the public, and Parliament, have the will to lock up a druggy in a soft prison forever, or until he’s cured?’

  ‘The mood of the people is changing, the current crime rate is doing that, and we all see the homeless living on the streets, many of whom are drug addicts.

  ‘Here in Leicester you’ve grabbed them all off the streets and placed them somewhere; a soft prison, a hostel or a converted old hotel. And the population of Leicester are not up in arms, there are no legal challenges, and the public widely support the move.

  ‘The local police here are downright bloody delighted, the council are happy, the shop owners and the pedestrians are happy, and if you put it to a vote then all of the residents of Leicester will vote in favour of locking up the druggies and the homeless, not see them back in the shop doorways.

  ‘So when your programme reaches other towns and cities, which it is doing, the reaction will be the same I’m sure because this problem has been building for twenty years.’

  ‘Doc Lepus, do we have a moral right to grab a homeless man or a drug addict and enforce our views of a good society upon them?’

  ‘Moral right, yes, as well as a duty of care, not to leave a person sleeping on the streets on a freezing winter’s night, and not to leave a drug addict to kill himself with an overdose.

  ‘I’ve been out of Britain for sixteen years, practising medicine around the world, and coming back was a shock for me, it was like walking into a cesspit of crime and drugs and homelessness.

  ‘Britain in 1997, best country in the world according to its population? Take a good look at the High Street and tell me that, then get on a plane to Asia and see how clean their streets are, and how low their crime rates are compared to here.