The hapless police hunt for a runaway swan in the action comedy Hot Fuzz is deemed one of the funniest episodes in British film created over the past 20 years.
This weekend, police officers in Bath – just up the road from where much of the filming for Edgar Wright’s movie took place – were called in to re-enact a real-life version of the scene.
A swan, or a cygnet to be precise, caused a flap among shoppers on Sunday when it wandered away from the River Avon and into the heart of the Georgian city.
A constable and two police community support officers worked together to move the swan away from shoppers to the river, one using a fluorescent jacket to usher the bird away.
Comparisons to Hot Fuzz, which was filmed in the Somerset cathedral city of Wells, 19 miles away, were irresistible.
In the film, Simon Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a former high-flying Met officer transferred to the fictional village of Sandford in Gloucestershire, where he is frustrated by the mundanity of the work.
He receives a call from a man who greets him with the classic line: “Morning – the swan’s escaped.” The caller, played by Stephen Merchant, identifies himself as Mr Staker – Peter Ian Staker. Angel assumes it is a hoax call: “P.I. Staker – piss-taker. Come on!”
But the film cuts to a scene in which someone really called Peter Ian Staker gives him a description of the missing bird: “2ft tall, erm long slender neck, orange and black bill.” Angel asks: “Anything else?” Staker replies: “Well it’s a swan.” Hapless efforts to catch the swan ensue.
The real-life Bath version appeared to go more smoothly.
Simon Galloway, 59, said: “I was out shopping with my wife and daughter and we noticed a bit of commotion outside the shop. That was when we saw a cygnet being escorted down the street – presumably down to the river. There were loads of shoppers around, everyone had their phones out, laughing.”
It is not the first time Bath PCSOs have had to deal with swans. Two officers tackled a couple of cygnets in Bath in November 2014. They put cones around one swan when it settled down in the middle of a road, then wrapped them in blankets and taken off to a canal.
PCSO Mike Symonds said after that incident: “We’ve had to deal with swans a couple of times before, so we knew how to handle them.
