Bond Villain

My story last month about Roger Moore didn't really have much to do with James Bond but this one does actually involve Steven Berkoff who played General Orlov in Octopussy alongside Roger Moore.

Now, being a Daily Mail story, they do enjoy a misleading headline.

For example: Pay and dismay: Mercedes left marooned after builders excavate station car park around it

No it wasn't, the story here clearly states that the builders left an escape ramp.

Another good example: Mystery solved! Elizabeth Hurley's car found covered in parking tickets after reports it was stolen during shopping trip

No it wasn't - it had three on it. Story here. Nearly another James Bond connection though - she was a star of Austin Powers which is a very entertaining JB spoof.

Anyway, the misleading Berkoff headline is James Bond villain Steven Berkoff, 75, banned from the road for jumping red light when he heard police sirens

He wasn't. He lost his licence for getting 12 penalty points on it. He also rather naughtily tried to declare his Californian driving licence number but that didn't work.

He claimed he moved through the red lights to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle. Seems like a reasonable thing to do, although he did it at 27mph!

It did get me thinking about what I would do if waiting at traffic lights and an emergency vehicle came up behind with its sirens blaring and lights flashing. What is the correct thing to do?

Well, thank you to Jerry from Lincolnshire who taught me something when he added the following comment to the Mail article, "It is absolutely never the right thing to do to pass a red light in these circumstances. It is absolutely not a defence to the crime of passing a red light to say you moved to allow a blue light vehicle to pass. If you do pass a red light and get prosecuted any compentent lawyer will advise you to plead guilty and try to minimse the sentce through mitigation. Emergncy vehicle drivers are trained that if they are behind a vehicle stopped at a red light they MUST wait for the light to go green before they can expect the vehicle in front to move. They are also supposed to turn off any siren until the light change but can keep blue lights on."

What he says is backed up here so I gave his comment a green up-arrow.


Now, basically, Berkoff jumped a red light at nearly 30mph, pretended he didn't have a British driving licence and claimed he was making way for an emergency vehicle. Worse than that, he was driving a Beetle.

General Orlov would not have been impressed.