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In Beatles mythology, Detective Sergeant Norman Clement ‘Nobby’ Pilcher looms like a bumbling avenging angel. He is Tom trying to trap Jerry, Jaws snapping at innocent bathers, Cruella de Vil sizing up dalmatians for the slaughter, or – perhaps closer to the reality – a Keystone Kop balancing a bucket of water on top of a door then forgetting all about it and getting soaked himself.

Five years older than John and Ringo, Norman Pilcher joined the Metropolitan Police in 1955, moving from the Flying Squad to the Drugs Squad in 1966, the very same year the Beatles were urging the young to turn off their minds, relax and float downstream. Pastimes such as these were far from Pilcher’s agenda: he wanted to bring criminals to justice, by whatever means possible.

One of Pilcher’s earliest victims, Eric Clapton, described him, not inaccurately, as ‘a kind of police groupie’. He was an autograph-hunter with handcuffs at the ready. He would keep an eye out for glassy-eyed singers and musicians, then target them for immediate investigation. As a consequence, his own fame began to rise commensurately.

Det. Sgt Pilcher conducted his first celebrity raid on 11 June 1966. Some weeks previously he had taken a keen interest in A Boy Called Donovan, a TV documentary about the hippy lifestyle of the fey, self-styled ‘troubadour’, in whose most recent single, ‘Sunshine Superman’, he had detected clear references to blowing minds. Its B-side, ‘The Trip’, was even more explicit.

In the documentary, louche long-haired young men and groovy women were seen lying around on cushions, playing guitars, handing around cigarettes shaped like barrage balloons and talking about freedom and love and ending all wars. It ended with two policemen entering one of these free-and-easy gatherings, apparently hosted by Donovan, searching about, finding nothing and leaving empty-handed. At this point Donovan gave a big, bleary wink to the camera, brazenly signalling that he himself was under the influence and couldn’t care less who knew it.

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Pilcher had found his next target. A few weeks later, he led nine Drugs Squad officers on a raid of Donovan’s flat in the Edgware Road. There, in the bedroom of the singer’s friend ‘Gypsy Dave’ Mills, they found a block of cannabis resin. Donovan, Gypsy Dave and a lady friend were immediately arrested and charged with possession.

George and Paul rallied around, hiring their lawyer, David Jacobs, to represent the accused. But they were found guilty, and fined £250. Eight months later, in February 1967, Pilcher led a raid on Keith Richards’ house, ‘Redlands’, in West Wittering, narrowly missing George and Pattie Harrison, who had left just a few minutes before.

And so it continued. On 19 August 1968, Pilcher successfully raided the flat of the jazz musician Tubby Hayes, charging him with possession of diamorphine and heroin. Later that month Donovan received an urgent call from John, who said: ‘I just got a call from a friend. I’m going to be busted.’ Donovan and Gypsy Dave drove down to Surrey, where they found John ‘swaggering like a sailor, his long hair flying, angry and ready to fight’. Donovan tried to calm him down: ‘Leave it to Gyp, he knows what to do.’

On a long glass coffee table were what Donovan recognised straight away as ‘three pyramids of sinsemilla’, a highly psychoactive variety of cannabis, the latest of a batch delivered to John every three months by a wealthy American admirer, hidden in the wings of a Mercedes. John sat back and played a Howlin’ Wolf song on his jukebox while Gypsy Dave and Donovan took charge of flushing the pyramids down the loo.

According to Donovan, they had just concluded another round of vigorous flushing when Det. Sgt Pilcher arrived. Finding nothing, he ‘assembled his men in the hall and said, “Next time we will get you, Lennon, mark my words.”’ Donovan looked on askance. ‘I thought John was going to nut him then and there, but Gyp held him back. As the cops filed out of the door John held it open for them, then crashed it shut with a “Good bloody riddance. Fuck off you bastards!” And they were gone.’

John’s actor friend Victor Spinetti remembers the incident slightly differently. In his version Donovan was already at John’s house, getting ready to show a film, when someone phoned with a tip-off. ‘Oh God,’ said John, ‘there’s going to be a police raid.’ He scooted around the house, picking up the cannabis, throwing it down the loo and attempting to flush it: ‘It took forever to float away, but then it was a silly place to put it.’ John then spotted something in a box, snatched it up and buried it in the garden. ‘At that moment, the police barged in, went upstairs, woke Julian, John’s son, and shook out his bed, this child’s bed! There was nothing hidden in it. After that they went right through the house, ransacking the place. We just sat there.’ According to Spinetti the police left the house empty-handed, but not before asking John for an autograph.

Two months later John and Yoko were living in Ringo’s flat in Montagu Square. One Friday Pete Shotton dropped by, only to find John hard at work with the vacuum cleaner.

‘Oh Christ, Pete! Am I glad to see you! The Drug Squad’s on the way!’

This time John had been tipped off by Don Short, the showbusiness correspondent of the Daily Mirror, who had himself been tipped off by the police. Before embarking on a raid, Pilcher liked to be sure of publicity.

John grew ever more frantic with his cleaning. ‘Jimi fucking Hendrix used to live here!’ he yelled as he rammed the Hoover back and forth against the walls. ‘Christ knows what the fuck is in these carpets!’

While Pete and John bustled about looking for anything incriminating, John disappeared into the bedroom. Through the door, Pete heard him arguing with Yoko. It soon dawned on Pete that they were arguing about him. ‘I don’t want him here! I just don’t want him here!’ screeched Yoko. The two of them had never got along.

‘Well, I fucking want him here!’ replied John. ‘We can use a bit of fucking help right now, and Pete just wants to help us!’

‘We can handle this ourselves, John, we don’t need HIM around! I don’t want him around!’

Tactfully, Pete let himself out, taking the vacuum-cleaner bag with him. Just before midnight, six policemen and one policewoman arrived on the doorstep. Yoko opened the door for just long enough to hear the policewoman say they had a search warrant. Then, in the measured words of Det. Sgt Pilcher, ‘Upon being informed that we were police officers and the reason for our visit, she ran back along the passage into the flat and slammed and locked the door.’

At the same time, an officer nipped round to the back of the building, and attempted to open the bedroom window while John held it shut, shouting, ‘I don’t care who you are, you’re not bloody coming in here!’ Then Yoko took over window duty while John got dressed.

‘Just open the window! You’ll only make it worse for yourself!’ shouted the officer.

‘I want to see the warrant!’ John shouted back. The police pressed the warrant to the window, and he pretended to read it. The police then tried to force the front door. Grudgingly, John let them in.

The police contingent included two dog handlers, but for some reason they had neglected to bring their dogs. In the half-hour it took for them to arrive John rang Neil Aspinall, who in turn rang Peter Brown, who was busy shepherding Paul’s latest discovery, the innocent Welsh songstress Mary Hopkin, between her various appointments. Brown raced round to find John and Yoko being formally charged with possession: the sniffer dogs, blessed with the inappropriately happy-go-lucky names of Yogi and Boo-Boo,1 had apparently uncovered cannabis in a leather binocular case and a suitcase. John was mystified – in his words, ‘I’m not stupid. I went through the whole damn house.’

By now, the press had assembled in force outside the building. They watched John and Yoko being taken to Paddington Green police station, where they were each bailed for £100, and booked to appear in court the next morning.

Their hearing lasted five minutes. Det. Sgt Pilcher read out the two charges against them, one for possession of a dangerous drug, the other for ‘wilfully obstructing Norman Pilcher, a constable of the Metropolitan Police Force …’ The case was adjourned until 28 November. On leaving the courtroom, John and Yoko were forced to wait in a scrum of journalists and photographers for their car to arrive. Never slow to turn a mishap to their advantage, they included one of these photographs on the back cover of their next album, Unfinished Music No 2: Life with the Lions.

Two days after their court appearance, a Labour MP tabled a written question to the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, drawing attention to the excessive use of manpower in the raid. In his defence, hand-delivered to the Home Secretary, Det. Sgt Pilcher explained that ‘at least five officers were required because of the difficulty in gaining entry to the premises and the fact that the premises consisted of two floors with numerous rooms that were in a very untidy condition’. He had needed extra manpower, he said, because ‘it is not unusual when executing search warrants for premises occupied by members of the entertainment world to find that there are large numbers of people present taking part in unusual parties. In this case it was found that only two persons were present, and both were in a state of undress.’

Two days later, Mr Callaghan was asked ‘to what extent the Metropolitan Police notified the press and publicity services of their intention to raid the private residence of John Lennon’. Det. Sgt Pilcher denied he had leaked news of the forthcoming raid, suggesting that a neighbour might have been responsible. However, an internal police report later concluded that ‘One thing is certain as far as this incident is concerned, and that is the press was informed by somebody.’

Five months later, Pilcher struck again. This time he chose the day of Paul and Linda’s wedding to raid George’s home in Esher, imagining no one would be in. But, unknown to Pilcher, Paul had decided against inviting the other Beatles and their partners. This meant that Pattie was at home, waiting for George to drop by later to take her to a party in London: ‘Suddenly I heard a lot of cars on the gravel in the drive – far too many for it to be just George. My first thought was that maybe Paul and Linda wanted to party after the wedding. Then the bell rang. I opened the door to find a crowd of uniformed policemen, one policewoman and a dog.’

The senior policeman introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Pilcher, and showed her his search warrant. ‘In they came, about eight policemen through the front, another five or six through the back, and there were more in the greenhouse.’ Yogi and Boo-Boo came too. George was later to suspect that Pilcher named Yogi after the Maharishi – not unlikely, given Pilcher’s peculiarly needy relationship with those he sought to prosecute.

Pattie rang George at Apple. Calmly, George said he would sort something out. Soon the ever-faithful Pete Shotton, who lived around the corner, arrived. As the police scoured the bungalow, Pattie poured herself and Pete a vodka and tonic. Pete pulled out a packet of Rothmans, only to remember with a start that among the cigarettes were a couple of joints. Suddenly Det. Sgt Pilcher appeared. ‘Look what Yogi has found!’ he said to Pattie, brandishing a block of hash.

‘Are you mad?’ said Pattie. ‘You brought that with you.’

Pilcher denied it: ‘Yogi found it in one of your husband’s shoes.’

‘This is a joke,’ retorted Pattie, adding, with beguiling honesty, ‘If we had a lump of hash like that we certainly wouldn’t keep it in George’s shoes. If you’d said at the start you were looking for cannabis, I would have told you it’s in the sitting room on the table in a pot. But you said you were looking for drugs. I thought you meant heroin or something dangerous …’

Pilcher was not amused. ‘I want to save you from the evils and peril of heroin,’ he said, or she said he said.

Pattie replied that she’d never touch heroin. She then accused Pilcher once again of planting the lump of hash. There was silence.

‘Now what are you all going to do?’ she asked.

‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ asked Pilcher.

‘Well, I’m not going to make it.’

To this day, the correct etiquette in such a situation remains hazy. As it was, a policewoman boiled the kettle and handed out the mugs. The various policemen then stood around looking awkward. One asked if they could watch the television. Another tried to break the ice with a polite question: ‘Have the Beatles been doing any new music?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Pattie, ‘but you’re not going to hear it.’

Pete asked them about life in the Drugs Squad. Had they ever taken drugs, just so they’d know what they were after? One of them said he’d run his finger along someone’s mantelpiece and then licked it, only to find himself embarking on an acid trip.

In a while, George arrived, together with Derek Taylor and a lawyer. Taylor noted how much the police were in awe of George: at the tender age of twenty-five he was, after all, one of the four most famous men in the world: ‘They stood to attention and were almost elbowing each other out of the way to get closer to him.’ Calm in the face of adversity, George ascended to a higher plain. ‘Birds have their nests and animals have their holes,’ he said, ‘but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head.’ Perhaps not catching the biblical allusion, Det. Sgt Pilcher arrested him.

George was scornful of the two pieces of evidence produced by Pilcher and his officers. His defence was both novel and, within its own limits, persuasive: one piece of dope was indeed his, ‘but I’ve never seen this one before in my fucking life! You don’t have to bring your own dope to my house, I’ve got plenty myself! I could have shown you where the stuff was if you’d asked me.’

Later, he explained that he was exceptionally tidy by nature: ‘I keep records in the record rack, tea in the tea caddy, pot in the pot box. This was the biggest stick of hashish I’ve ever seen, and something I’d obviously know about if I had seen it before.’

As George and Pattie were leaving for the police station, a press photographer appeared and started snapping away, causing George to lose his cool. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing on my property? I’m going to fucking kill you, you bastard!’ He chased the photographer around the garden, followed, hot on his heels, by the Drug Squad. ‘I couldn’t help but laugh,’ recalled Pete – it reminded him of a Marx Brothers chase.

At the police station, George and Pattie were fingerprinted and charged. ‘We got home feeling gloomy,’ recalled Pattie, ‘so George said, “Come on, let’s go to the party.”’

The party in question was being thrown by the talented Old Etonian painter and musician Rory McEwen. As they entered, George and Pattie bumped into Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret. ‘You can’t believe what happened,’ said George. ‘We got busted.’

‘What a shame,’ said Princess Margaret.

‘Can you help us?’ asked George. ‘Can you use your influence?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so!’ replied the princess, with a look of alarm.

Pattie’s youngest sister Paula, who was also present, failed to pick up the signs. Instead, she lit a joint, took a puff and offered it to the princess, who abruptly turned on her heels and left, taking her baffled husband with her.

At Esher and Walton magistrates’ court the following March, George and Pattie Harrison were found guilty of possession of cannabis and fined £250 each, plus ten guineas each in costs. ‘I hope the police will leave us alone now,’ George said as they left court.

The next month, George and Eric Clapton dropped in on an early-evening party given by the drug charity, Release, but they didn’t stay long. Soon after their departure, Det. Sgt Pilcher arrived with his band of officers from the Drugs Squad, demanding to know the whereabouts of Harrison and Clapton. Told that they were on their way to a B.B. King concert at the Royal Albert Hall, he sighed and left.

Like so many who bobbed along in the wake of the Beatles, Det. Sgt Norman Pilcher tried to keep up with them, but ended up lost at sea. In 1972 he resigned from the Metropolitan Police in shadowy circumstances. Towards the end of that year he boarded a liner bound for Australia, where he planned to start a new life; but on his arrival at Fremantle he was arrested on charges of perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and extradited back to Britain.

In September 1973, Pilcher was sentenced to four years in custody. The tables had turned. ‘You poisoned the wells of criminal justice and set about it deliberately,’ said Justice Melford Stevenson, never chummy. ‘What is equally bad is that you have betrayed your comrades in the Metropolitan Police Force, which enjoys the respect of the civilised world – what remains of it.’

Thereafter, Norman Pilcher disappears from view, though some say he retired to Kent. But his legend lives on. Time has made a pantomime figure of him: the clodhopping, evidence-planting copper, mesmerised by those he yearns to bring down, rapping on the door after his prey has skedaddled. Yet he has achieved a form of immortality. In one Monty Python sketch he was immortalised as a giant hedgehog called Spiny Norman, ‘twelve feet from snout to tail’, who sleeps in an aeroplane hangar at Luton Airport and spies on the notorious gangsters the Piranha Brothers. In another he is Police Constable Pan-Am, bent on arresting everyone, including witnesses and victims: ‘I must warn you that anything you may say will be ignored … One more peep out of you and I’ll do you for heresy … I’m charging you with illegal possession of whatever we happen to have down there.’ In Eric Idle and Neil Innes’s spoof Beatles documentary The Rutles, he is Detective Inspector Brian Plant, who plants Indian tea and biscuits on a member of the Rutles.

Norman Pilcher is also often credited as the ‘semolina pilchard’ in ‘I am the Walrus’, though the dates don’t support it: the song was recorded in September 1967, just over a year before Det. Sgt Pilcher first turned up uninvited on the doorstep of Montagu Square.

1 Or were they pseudonyms?