WATCHING THE DETECTIVES
“HE WAS COLLECTING busts – and he was collecting headlines,” says Donovan, who enjoyed the grim accolade of being Norman Pilcher’s first celebrity scalp. The Detective Sergeant’s modus operandi varied little over his period of fame: working closely with the UK press, he stalked pop stars, invariably with a photographer or reporter in tow, and always managed to locate drugs. There’s no proof he was being paid for the scoops he provided to the press; it’s possible that fame alone drove him. “We called him ‘Groupie Pilcher’,” says Caroline Coon of drugs charity Release. “Because those cops wanted fame. To glory in it.” In late 1965, pop stars were regarded as lucrative economic assets. By the next year, they were a threat to society. “We were spreading the manifesto, of Kerouac, of freedom of thought,” says Donovan. “And people were watching.” Literally, in Donovan’s case. In June 1966 he and friend ‘Gypsy’ Dave Mills had returned from a trip to the US and moved into a third floor Edwardian flat in Maida Vale. The drugs squad rented an overlooking flat to keep tabs on them. Finally, Pilcher manipulated a girlfriend of Gyp’s to help them gain entrance. “Gyp opens the door and in come nine burly policemen with Pilcher,” Donovan recalls. “I am naked, grabbing onto the policemen’s necks and they’re smashing up beautiful things in the room. It’s terrible.” Donovan readily admits to smoking weed, but not the two ounces of Lebanese that Pilcher triumphantly brandished, moments into the raid: “We couldn’t even find that stuff to buy in London! We would never buy that much. Not that we thought anything bad about it.” Post-bust, Pilcher asked him to sign an album. When Donovan and Gyp finally returned to the flat after being charged, the phone rang: “It was a guy at the Daily Mirror who said: ‘Tell me the whole story.’ The next call was George Harrison, who offered us £10,000 for legal fees. We said, We’re going away until it blows over. George said, ‘It won’t blow over. We’ll be next.’” Pilcher would bust, or attempt to bust, all the pop aristocracy, including Harrison, John Lennon, Brian Jones and Eric Clapton – who was warned by Coon’s people and fled through the back door at King’s Road hippy haunt the Pheasantry as Pilcher was knocking on the front. The policeman’s efforts were rewarded by immortality of an enigmatic sort, in that he is regularly alleged to have inspired Lennon’s “semolina pilchard” in I Am The Walrus. Pilcher’s downfall came in September 1973 following the trial of Basil Sands, who was convicted of drugs smuggling despite the dubious claims of Pilcher and team that Sands was co-operating with them. Pilcher’s boss, Detective Chief Inspector Victor Kelaher, evaded prosecution due to ill-health. Pilcher escaped to Australia, but was arrested in Fremantle and extradited for trial at the Old Bailey. Together with two fellow detectives he was convicted of perjury. Justice Melford Stevenson, already celebrated for jailing the Kray twins, told Pilcher, “You poisoned the wells of criminal justice… and betrayed your comrades in the Metropolitan Police Force, which enjoyed the respect of the civilised world – what remains of it.” He was sentenced to four years, served two, and now lives in Kent.