V2002 (long, rambling post alert!)
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 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 etc. Just basically living up to the Scally stereotype. 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 one of the poles that were holding our windbreak in place (we do proper camping, us!) 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. (I'm 6'1" and I'm the shortest of my friends!)

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 4 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.

Anyway, the rest of our party were up by then (us having woke them up so they wouldn't miss the always gratifying sight of a Scally in handcuffs). Seeing 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.

(The only slight problem with this was that my mate had just rolled a joint and spent the whole time with a manic grin on his face, and his arm tucked behind his back!)

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!

Woo, that was a long one. Brought tears to my eyes, etc, etc...
(MrC. Having the most boring username on b3ta since 2004, Sun 25 Sep 2005, 13:31, Reply)