Yoko answered the door in her birthday suit and then John came down and he was stark naked, too
By the copper who arrested the stars
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 Springfield. “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 officers turned up. He and Mick Jagger w e r e
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 the singer 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’ Kensington flat and holding him alongside flamboyant pal Prince Stanislas “Stash” Klossowski. All three Stones faced draconian court
treatment. Jones, who was greeted outside the court by his girlfriend, model Suki Potier, admitted possession of cann for smoking it.
He was jailed for nine months but that was reduced on appeal to a fine and three years’ probation. The conviction hastened his rapid decline into prescrip`tion drug abuse, culminating in his death in his swimming pool in July 1969.
Norman says: “I felt sorry for Brian and regret I didn’t stay in contact and keep him on the straight and narrow.
“He was had over rotten by people surrounding him. I’m convinced he was murdered. One day I intend to prove it.”
Jagger got three months for possession of amphetamine but was freed pending appeal. Richards spent the first night of a year-long sentence at Wormwood Scrubs for allowing cannabis to be smoked at his home. He was then freed. Both convictions were later quashed.
Norman’s most notorious arrest came
in October 1968 at 34 Montagu Square, Marylebone, previously occupied by Ringo Starr and guitar legend Jimi Hendrix. Now it was home to John Lennon and partner Yoko Ono.
Norman says he posed as a postman to trick targets into opening the door. “It didn’t work on John and Yoko though,” he laughs. “They took some convincing to let us in. Yoko answered the door in her birthday suit, then John came down and he was stark naked too. We asked if they had drugs but, of course, they said no.
“We had a warrant. They got dressed and we waited for their lawyers to come down, then we brought the dog up.
“It went straight to this binoculars case in the lounge and inside was a lump of cannabis resin about the size of your thumb. It was enough to arrest them.
“At the station, we sat discussing the way John lived. He believed in peace and friendship and love, and felt very strongly that it was his body and if he wanted to smoke a joint, it was his business.
“He turned my mind around in relation to drug possession. I felt guilty his little conviction was going to have such a huge effect on his life. I knew it would cause him problems getting into America.”
Lennon pleaded guilty and got a fine. Norman recalls: “When it was all over, he sent us some signed records and half a dozen bottles of brandy. There was no animosity. He used to send me postcards. I remember getting one from
Japan which said: ‘Hope you’re all right, Nobby. You can’t bust me now!’ I wish I’d kept them but, sadly, I lost them in a house move.”
Six months later, Norman raided George Harrison’s home in Esher, Surrey. Harrison was at Paul McCartney’s wedding to Linda the day Norman and his squad turned up. They were met by Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd and found a lump of hash in his shoe.
Harrison claimed the drugs had been planted but Norman says: “We had no need to plant drugs. The amount of work coming in was ridiculous.”
However by 1970, the team stopped going after possession. Instead, they began to focus on the traffickers – a move that led to Norman’s downfall.
An anti-corruption inquiry targeted the drug squad and a major international trafficking case. Six officers – including Norman – were tried at the Old Bailey in 1973. He and two others were convicted of perjury and he was
We were so busy, we’d no need to plant drugs on anyone
NORMAN PILCHER ON HARRISON’S CLAIM
jailed for four years. “Of course I was bitter,” he says. “I loved the job, had 17 commendations and a good career ahead – we were ‘collateral damage’.”
After his release, Norman, who was married with two children, ran a care home and driving school, as internet rumours occasionally suggested he had passed away.
Rumour also has it Norman is immortalised in a line from Beatles classic I Am The Walrus: “Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel tower.” And he was lampooned in Monty Python skits, christened “Spiny Norman” and “Brian Plant”.
Bent Coppers by Norman Pilcher, published by Clink Street, is out Tuesday.