Norman “Nobby” Pilcher, whose death from cancer two years ago at the age of 85 has just been reported, was the drugs squad detective who arrested John Lennon, George Harrison, Brian Jones and Dusty Springfield, but who eventually ended up behind bars himself.
Photos of Pilcher arresting rock stars for drug offences featured on many front pages in the 1960s, earning him the nickname “Groupie Pilcher” in the underground press. He claimed later, in a memoir, Bent Coppers (2020), that “the Home Office were breathing down our necks to move on more of the big names” and that his fellow officers would tip off the press, in exchange for cash, whenever someone famous was about to be busted.
On 18 October 1968, wearing a postman’s hat as a disguise, Pilcher led his squad into the Marylebone flat of Lennon and Yoko Ono and discovered that “they were stark naked”. Lennon would be fined £150 for possession of a small amount of cannabis. Pilcher was impressed by him: “His ideas of peace and kindness were expressed in his demeanour and attitude, which was quite humbling.” Later he received a postcard from Lennon on tour in Japan with the greeting: “You can’t get me now!”
In his memoir, he recounted that “John Lennon taught me that his use of drugs was a matter for him … It is a fair point.” He accepted that when Lennon wrote I Am the Walrus with a reference to “semolina pilchard”, he may well have had Pilcher in mind, and was now happy to be known as “the Walrus”.
While the Lennon arrest was the most highly publicised, many other musicians were targeted by Pilcher’s team. Jones, of the Rolling Stones, was raided in 1967 and the following year Tubby Hayes, the jazz saxophonist, was found in possession of heroin. Harrison and Pattie Boyd were arrested for small quantities of cannabis found in their home in Esher, Surrey, in 1969. Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops was held at the Mayfair hotel.
After tip-offs from informers, the homes of the composer Lionel Bart and the singer Dusty Springfield were also raided. Pilcher recounted that Springfield responded with “foul language and insults”.
Pilcher’s father, also Norman, was a carpenter who had served in North Africa in the second world war and his mother, Violet, worked in a munitions factory and then ran a boarding house in Margate, Kent, where Norman junior grew up. After leaving school he joined the army, serving in the military police before being recruited by the Metropolitan police in 1955, aged 20.
He was stationed initially at Bow Street, then in Sidcup, before being promoted to detective sergeant. In 1966, he was approached by the then detective chief superintendent Wally Virgo, who would later be exposed as one of the Met’s most corrupt senior officers, and asked to join the already notorious drugs squad.
As he put it in his memoir: “The squeaky clean officer was never able to remain dirt-free if he wanted to investigate crime … London and the Met were rotten and if you needed to walk through muck you’d need to be prepared to get your clothes dirty.”
His team were known by other officers as “the Whispering Squad” because they discussed their work in “quiet corners, so we could whisper”.
The drugs squad at the time was notorious for planting drugs, although Pilcher denied ever doing so himself.
The scandals within the Met led to the appointment of Robert Mark as commissioner in 1972 with a brief to clean up Scotland Yard. Pilcher resigned from the Met later that year and set off with his family for what he hoped would be a new life in Perth, Australia, but he was detained by the police on his arrival in Fremantle harbour.
A warrant for his arrest had been issued in London and he was extradited to face trial for perjury. In the course of a major drugs-smuggling investigation, he had fabricated entries in his police diary. He said in his defence that this was standard practice and something his senior officers had encouraged him to do.
In 1973, after a 38-day Old Bailey trial, he was convicted and jailed for four years. The judge, Mr Justice Stevenson, told him: “You poisoned the wells of criminal justice and set about it deliberately … not the least grave aspect of what you have done is provide material for the crooks, cranks and do-gooders who unite to attack the police whenever the opportunity arises.”
Pilcher served his sentence in Ford open prison in West Sussex, which he found comparatively amenable: “It was common practice for us to pop out in the evening to a local pub for a drink.” He emerged in 1975 and found work with the London Electricity Board, and later ran a driving school and a care home in Kent.
He decided to tell his story in a ghostwritten memoir published in 2020. He told me at the time that he wanted to “set the record straight and let the public know about the corruption within the police service”. He added that he now believed that “we should legalise drugs and bring them above ground … You’ve only got to look at prohibition and what that led to.” There are plans to turn his story into a docudrama.
He is survived by Shirley, whom he met at a party in Margate when they were both aged 14, and his children, Gregg and Joanna.
• Norman Clement Pilcher, police officer, born 1 June 1935; died 14 March 2021
