Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
DRUG SQUAD’S
In the Swinging Sixties he was the scourge of rock stars but today the ex-scotland Yard detective who busted John Lennon for cannabis calls the war on drugs a waste of time.
Detective Sergeant Norman “Nobby” Pilcher became infamous for the highprofile raids that put members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones in the dock.
His success sparked claims that he planted dope on his targets to scupper the counterculture bands.
But despite a conviction for lying on oath that earned him four years in jail and ended his controversial career, Norman insists he played by the book.
Now 85 and battling bone cancer, he has penned a memoir, Bent Coppers, in which he says Lennon would later send him postcards.
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror, he also told of his regret over the death of Rolling Stone Brian Jones, two years after he raided his flat.
Norman says: “I was used as a pawn to generate publicity about drug policing but the reality is, this isn’t a war you can win. Fifty years on, we’ve learnt nothing. Drug legislation is archaic.”
He joined London’s Met Police aged 20 as a uniformed bobby. He worked his way up to CID and in 1966 was offered a transfer to the nascent drug squad at Scotland Yard.
“I knew nothing about drugs,” he says. “When I joined , the drug squad wasn’t really an active unit. The Home Office had a problem with celebrities using them and wanted us to do something but we never set out to target these people. It didn’t matter if your name was Joe Bloggs or John Lennon, if you ended up on our list, we were going to take a look at you.”
One early collar Norman felt belonged to pop singer Dusty Spring field. “We arrested her for cannabis,” he recalls.
“The language she came out with! She must have been taking lessons from a brickie.”
In February 1967, Rolling Stone Keith Richards was coming down from an LSD trip at his Sussex pad when 18 police of ficers turn ed u p . He a n d Mick Jagger we re
Hope you are alright Nobby, you can’t bust me now! JOHN LENNON IN POSTCARD FROM JAPAN
nicked in an operation later attributed to Norman. However, he says: “I wasn’t there. It was a Sussex Constabulary job. It’s the same story with th e sin ger Donovan. He has always claimed that I arrested him but I never met the guy.” In May 1967, on the day Jagger and Richards were charged, Norman added another Rolling Stone to the police trophy cabinet by raiding Brian Jones’ Kensin g ton flat and holding him alongside f lamboyant pal Prince Stanislas “Stash” Klossowski. All three Stones faced draconian court
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