Alfie Moore,

Settle Stories

IN the intimate atmosphere of The Joinery, home to Settle Stories, there was no place for the audience to hide as cop-turned comedian Alfie Moore began his interrogation.

No secrets remained hidden with victims and suspects alike felt obliged to reveal name, profession and a range of other details to provide grist to the comedy mill and crime solving process.

The performance was part improvisation and part scripted being a try out of material for his new series of the BBC Radio 4 comedy series It’s A Fair Cop.

The series is structured so that Alfie is able to blend his layman’s explanations of the law with leading an audience through a real-life scenario and in between deviating off into a range of anecdotes about police life.

It was interesting to see the way he wove together these threads and also allowed time for the audience to develop points and to start to look at where they too draw their own moral boundaries.

Never judgemental, he focussed only on what the law says in relation to certain situations and the options open to the police, criminal prosecution service and judiciary and allowed the audience to form their own opinions about the effectiveness and appropriateness of some of these courses of action.

We ask a lot of our police force, and the humour and anecdotes delivered so smoothly and with such effortless timing by Alfie Moore gives us a chance to look behind the scenes and to see the world beyond the TV drama.

Many of his tales have punchlines that are almost too painfully obvious to be true, but actually they are the ones which you really couldn’t invent - although like any good storyteller, they are just neatly tidied up and embroidered.

This fascinating and fun evening was delivered with wit and charm.

- Gill O’Donnell