Up in smoke

Date: 10/09/1998

You would have thought that, as police work goes, guarding a field would count as one of the less stressful duties our trusty law enforcement officers are called on to perform.

However, this was not the case for a group of unfortunate officers in Tayside, Scotland, recently.

The police in question had been assigned to keep watch over a field planted with a test variety of genetically modified oil-seed rape to prevent the plants being ripped up by environmental campaigners.

Facing the prospect of a chilly night, the boys in blue decided to set up their operation in a nearby barn.

It was at this point that things started to go wrong.

Apparently, the intrepid surveillance team left a car engine running. Sparks from the exhaust pipe set fire to bales of hay in the barn, which soon began to blaze away merrily.

By the time the fire brigade arrived both the barn and the police car had been completely destroyed.