LIKE all fantasists, Terence Cooper lived in a world of his own. Unfortunately his world and ours collided.

Dressed as a paramedic, he once told police officers who stopped him for speeding that he was on an urgent "human tissue transfer". After setting up the Yorkshire Regional Ambulance Service from his York home, he was able to borrow a real ambulance and take an elderly patient to hospital.

Those with suspicions were placated when they saw his official-looking identity card, and heard him, in the words of investigating officer Sergeant Nigel Atkinson, speaking in "all the service jargon".

Surreal and scary stuff. But all perfectly legal.

While impersonating a police officer is an offence, there is no law to prevent anyone passing themselves off as a paramedic.

Clearly the police have unique powers of arrest and detainment which no civilian should be able to imitate. But the public also needs to be protected from anyone who reinvents themselves as a life-saving medic after watching a few episodes of Casualty.

Mercifully, people with self-delusions on the scale of Terence Cooper are rare. He is not a one-off, however. We have reported in the past how a conman posed as a hospital doctor in York, and similar stories crop up across the country.

These people may mean no harm. But they could cost a life. Impersonating a doctor or a paramedic should become an offence before a Cooper-style fantasy has fatally real consequences.

Updated: 10:00 Thursday, September 16, 2004