Simon,

In the mid-1990s I was a policeman in the Metropolitan Police. One
summer day we were charged with guarding the main gates of a large
country house that was hosting the wedding of a member of the Greek
Royal family. All we had to do was stand outside the gate in full uniform - including helmet - and move out of the way when a car came up to the gates. Most cars slowed down or stopped but one Range Rover came driving up and didn't even slow down, never mind stop. I was forced to jump out of the way, simultaneously turning to shout at him through the open driver's window. I called him an (expletive deleted) idiot. He laughed and carried on. To my horror I then realised that I'd just verbally abused none other than Prince Phillip himself.

But if you think that is where my Confession ends, well, no, it gets worse. Much worse. It was a hot day and by the evening I was bored. I
had been standing with a WPC with whom I got on well. We had been
chatting out of the corner of our mouths for hours, trying to hide
this conversation from the assembled TV and press cameras. By the evening, however, they had all gone. In the background, from a far away radio, I could hear Marvin Gaye singing "I heard it through the grapevine". This has always been a favourite of mine and so my foot started to tap. This then turned into a bit of a jig.

Simon, you have to understand that standing still for hours, only
moving to jump out of the way of posh cars, was tiring. I was bored,
thirsty, aching and well, ok, I went a bit too far.

My little jig turned into a full-on comedy dance routine. I was "moon
walking" (well, in name I was, I doubt that I looked anything like
Michael Jackson, being 6' 4" and 16 stone...) across the gate entrance, making increasingly extravagant hand gestures in time to the music. I was singing at the top of my voice to my colleague. She was a game girl, normally up for fun, but for some reason she was uncharacteristically shy that day. She "sshhh'd" me discreetly at first. Then hissed at me to stop. Then she actually shouted at me. This didn't, I'm sorry to say, stop me. It just made me worse. I was showing off in the worse possible way.

It was whilst backing away from her, wiggling my backside and waving a finger at her that I spotted the solitary Greek TV crew who had been dispatched to the UK to film the wedding. Worse still , they were filming a piece to camera with the anchor woman stood to one side, pointing at me and giving an excitable commentary to my every move.

Any sense of decorum that I might have once had deserted me. So I ran. I sprinted in fact, to the refreshment tent and hid there for the rest of the evening, leaving my colleague alone. She did talk to me again, but only after sulking for six months.

Gradually the time passed and I tried to forget about this incident. However, one day a colleague on the force returned from his foreign holiday in an unusually good mood. Soon, many of the others joined him with lots of laughing and sniggering. Eventually I found out the truth, when I stumbled into the staff room and saw half the force on their break, all gathered around a TV set. On the screen was a video recording of the top Greek entertainment clip show ‘Policemen Do The Silliest Things’ (or words to that effect)– which he’d seen repeatedly on his holiday. I was the laughing stock of the workplace for years to come.

Simon, I seek forgiveness not for abusing Prince Phillip. Nor for
embarrassing the Metropolitan Police (in fact, I embarrassed them far,
far more than that on many other occasions...) or embarrassing my
colleague. Nor am I sorry for ruining the Greek ‘Royal Wedding’ TV special.

I actually seek forgiveness from the Royal family. In my embarrassment and shame I had left them woefully exposed as I hid in the refreshment tent, leaving them guarded only by a grumpy WPC.

Graham