V2002
At the V festival in Staffordshire, 2002.

We got there quite late and had no choice but to set up our tents at the back of the field, near one of the huge and completely ineffective metal fences.

We set up camp and had an amazing day. We got back to the campsite on Saturday night. We couldn't help but notice a few campers nearby complaining about the "fucking Scallies" who were inhabiting a tent not far from ours. We had seen a few them earlier in the day blantantly wandering around the campsite with obviously stolen boxes of beer, stereos and whatever else they could get their little scally mitts on. Also we heard that they were letting their mates in over the security fence.

Anyway, late on Saturday night a few of us were still sitting around drinking and chatting when out of nowhere two blokes came running through the middle of us. The first was a Scally who was being chased by an irate camper who had just caught the cheeky scamp making off with some of his beer. The Scally stopped running, picked up a stick and WHACKED the other bloke over the head with it. There was blood everywhere, but luckily the bloke was okay and we managed to disarm the Scally and persuade him off to bed.

Well, after that we had no choice but to go to the security blokes and explain the situation. It turned out that they were aware of what was going on and the police would be arriving the next morning. We felt it would be a good idea to stay awake until the police arrived, so a few of us stayed up the rest of the night.

At about 6 the next morning the police arrived, en masse. What followed can only be described as a game of "hunt the Scally". They had (at best) a large, 6 man tent. When the police arrived about 10 people came streaming out of this tent and went off running in various directions. They were all rounded up quite quickly, and the police spent quite a bit of time bringing various possesions out of their tent. I'm not exaggerating when I say that as well as the usual beer and stereos, one of these possessions was a massive plastic camping table with benches.

Seeing that we were awake the Sergeant decides to come over for a chat. We give him a cup of tea, offer him a bacon sandwich and he sits down with us.

This Sergeant made one comment that will stick in my mind for ever. "Bloody Scousers", he said. "If I had my way I'd take a bloody flame-thrower to the whole of Liverpool!"

Staffordshire Police. Gotta love 'em!
(MrC. Having the most boring username on b3ta since 2004, Mon 8 Jun 2009, 17:02, Reply)