How Rotyhbury might have looked, if Gazza had been deployed.
Former footballer Paul Gascoigne, fitted with a nuclear warhead with the killing power of six Hiroshimas, was part of a Northumbria Police doomsday scenario in the hunt for crazed gunman Raoul Moat, writes Nigel Eels.
Acting chief constable Sue Sim, of Northumberland Police, planned to detonate the “daft-as-a-brush” star as a last resort, after Moat continued to evade a manhunt consisting of more than 7,000 police, 5,000 special forces, 58 dogs and three rabbits.
A police insider told The New Grind: “This was Sim’s big chance at the top job and she was blowing it big-style.
“The police is a macho culture, and senior male officers were laughing behind her back at her failure to catch this guy. And at her hair.
“She decided that if Moat was going to take her down, then she was going to take Rothbury off the map.”
It is understood that Gascoigne, who famously wept after receiving a yellow card, had been drinking heavily in a local pub when Sim suggested using him as a weapon of mass destruction.
“After 20 pints Gazza will do virtually anything these days, including getting a taxi to Rothbury with a bag of scotch eggs for his perceived old pal Raoul Moat,” the insider said.
“Sim ordered officers to strap a 50-megaton nuclear bomb to his back, send him off to meet Moat, then blow him up. It’s just as well they tasered Britain’s most wanted man, causing his trigger finger to involuntarily blow his own head off, before meltdown occurred.”
Northumbria Police have already referred their handling of the case to the Police Complaints Commission.
And questions are sure to be asked after it was revealed last night that Moat had not only spent the last seven days hiding behind a tree, but had tigged a number of police officers involved in the search.
In a letter found on his body, Moat said: “I tigged at least three police, telling them they were it – but they never came looking. And you wonder why I hate coppers!”
Acting chief constable Sim was unavailable for comment yesterday. Paul Gascoigne was understood to be on his way to Palestine, in a bid to solve the Middle East Crisis.
