Since swapping the life of a North Yorkshire bobby for that of a writer, Mike Pannett has rarely been off the bestseller lists. He spoke to STEPHEN LEWIS about his fifth – and possibly final – ‘Lad’ book.

MIKE Pannett witnessed plenty of odd goings-on during his 20 years as a policeman. Quite a few have made their way into his hugely popular series of ‘Lad’ books, about the life of a North Yorkshire bobby.

What happened at the Great Yorkshire show this week would have made a great story for one of them.

He’d been invited to join the Welcome To Yorkshire stand at the show, and White Rose Books from Thirsk had supplied 1,000 copies of his latest book, Up Beat And Down Dale, ahead of the book’s official launch next Thursday.

In the first hour, sales were going well. Then the heavens opened, and the show was cancelled.

So what happened to all those books?

“We took them to the North Yorkshire WI stall and put them under the cake stands to be safe!” Mike says cheerfully.

The 48-year-old, who lives near Easingwold with wife Ann and their three children, has plenty of reasons for feeling cheerful.

His ‘Lad’ books have regularly topped bestseller lists since the first one, Now Then Lad?, was published in 2008. Up Beat And Down Dale, the fifth and possibly final book in the series, looks set fair to do the same.

It is already in the top ten of Amazon’s worldwide bestsellers list in terms of pre-orders, he says. “Not bad for someone from little old Yorkshire.”

He has struck a winning recipe with the books. From Now Then Lad onwards, they tell the real-life story of his time as a rural North Yorkshire bobby. They’re partly gentle North Yorkshire humour in the James Herriot or Heartbeat style. But they’re about real policing, too, and sometimes dip into grittier territory.

Up Beat And Down Dale is no exception. It is written in his trademark punchy, ‘Laddish’ style – right from the opening paragraph, in which Mike strikes a deal to buy some ‘nicely seasoned logs’:

“‘There you are, cock-bod.’ Soapy watched as the last of the stout poles rolled down the trailer bed and clattered onto the pile. Then he peeled off a glove and held out a hand. ‘That’ll be thirty smackeroos…’”

In the course of the book, which brings Mike’s story right up to 2007 when he left the police to start writing, the constable investigates a series of farmhouse burglaries, and launches a search for a missing dog owner as winter takes a grip on the landscape. There is also the harrowing business of taking three children into care against their mother’s wishes.

Fans of the books will be heartbroken that Mike describes this as his last in the series.

Have no fear, however. There may yet be another one further down the line. But before that, in a new series of books, he is returning to his early days as a policeman.

As a 24-year-old, he landed himself a job with the Metropolitan Police in London: and worked there for ten years before moving back north to become a North Yorkshire bobby. And it is the story of his early police career in London that he will be telling in his next book, Without Fear Or Favour.

It’s a story that will, for obvious reasons, be much grittier than those told in his Lad books. During his ten years in the Met he policed riots, and dealt with drugs gangs and murders.

His first riot was the poll tax riot in Trafalgar Square and it was, he says, utterly terrifying. “It was like open warfare,” he says. “My first vision of it was getting out of a van, and a handful of bricks being thrown at me.

“There was one poor chap, a police sergeant who had been on football match duty until he got pulled in for this, who was hit in the face with a brick full-on. He lost all his teeth.

“He had just got out of the van, he was just about to retire, and he lost all his teeth.”

However, while the storylines will be harder in that new series, the voice will still be his own, he says.

There will be humour, and the usual gallery of characters, including the West Indian shopkeepers he got to know as a local bobby in West Battersea.

In many ways, he says, Without Fear Or Favour will be a kind of Crocodile Dundee story, about how a raw Yorkshire lad, born in York and brought up in Crayke, adjusts to the pace of life in the capital.

That’s all for the future, however.

Up Beat And Down Dale, the last of his Lad books – unless he does go back to write a final one some time in the future – is officially launched on Thursday, at White Rose Books in Thirsk.

Then on Saturday, Mike will be in York to sign copies – first at WH Smith in Coney Street from 10am to 1pm, and then at WH Smith in Monks Cross from 2pm to 5pm.

• Up Beat And Down Dale by Mike Pannett is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £13.99.