“Ello, ello, ello! What’s going on here then?”

“Nuthin’ Sarge.”

“If I’m not very much mistaken you and PC Davies would appear to be employed in the act of destroying Hevidence…”

“Heaven forfend Guv. We’re just making confetti for the Royal Wedding and Jubilee celebrations, from all these old papers we found.”

“That’s an awful lot of confetti. Almost a lorry load and the Jubilee’s not for years. Where did you find all that paper?”

“In those boxes right at the back there. We figured no-one would miss them.”

“You mean those boxes marked top secret, highly sensitive?”

“Oh, is that what they say? My reading isn’t too good.”

“Right, well, very patriotic of you I must say, carry on, carry on. One question, why are you using that industrial grade shredder?”

“The usual office one broke under the strain Guv. We tried to fix it but it fell down the stairs.”

“Right, well that does happen quite a lot. What’s DC Jones doing over there?”

“Er, practising his signature, Guv?”

“Well he must be bloody good at it by now, he’s been at it for hours. OK, that all seems to be in order, nothing to see here!”

“There won’t be in about half an hour.”

That seems to be pretty much the narrative put forward by Britain’s most senior and populous force in the face of some of the most serious allegations of wrongdoing and malfeasance levelled at police since the Guildford Four were fitted up.

One almost, and I emphasise the word almost, feels sorry for Bernard Hogan-Howe. A former senior Manchester cop he, all of a sudden, found himself catapulted to the top job at the Met only to find himself in the middle of a shit storm of spectacular proportions.

That must be a bit like winning the Willie Wonka golden ticket and then having to have all your teeth extracted because you ate so many chocolate bars.

Or being Nick Clegg.

It is ironic that, at a time when the most raved-about drama series on British television is Line of Duty — a show predicated on the idea of cops examining the conduct of their fellow cops — more and more evidence of police collusion, corruption and blatant cover-ups continues to emerge.

Hogan-Howe was hauled before the home affairs select committee this week where he got a serious roasting over evidence of Met officers spying on the bereaved family of Stephen Lawrence and their supporters, senior investigating officers consorting with known cons, the witholding of evidence from a public inquiry and, as it emerged, the wholesale shredding of incriminating documents.

Sources within Scotland Yard had attempted farcically to claim that the destruction of evidence was carried out for “human rights” and “data protection” reasons.

That’s like saying they shot an unarmed man for his own safety, although come to think of it, they already have tried that one more than once.

It’s funny how they suddenly get interested in privacy and human rights legislation when they get caught out.

They didn’t seem quite so bothered when they were using undercover cops to infiltrate and act as agents provocateurs in environmental and anti-racist groups. And when those same officers mendaciously began relationships, at least one of which bore a child, with unsuspecting female activists. Or for that matter when they went all Edward Fox and used the names of dead children as aliases.

Under questioning from Keith Vaz MP and others Hogan-Howe admitted that he didn’t know what was in the destroyed documents, because they’d been shredded. He also confessed that he had not bothered to read three reports into corruption within the force.

Much has been made, in that usual hand-wringing fashion beloved by politicians and civil servants the world over, of the need to preserve public confidence in the Met.

Personally this column has every confidence in them. I’m confident they are racist thugs. I’m confident they lie through their teeth. And I’m bloody certain I wouldn’t trust them to help a little old lady across the road without someone ending up in intensive care or banged up on a spurious charge.

If anyone still naively clings to the belief that the cops are upstanding public servants there for our protection, I have a time share villa in Majorca I’d like to discuss with them.