Del Boy van driver threatened with arrest for having comedy blow-up doll in the back

A Del Boy impersonator was pulled over by a police officer for having an inflatable doll in the back of the original Trotters’ van. Richard Foster, who runs Bognor Regis-based Del Boy Van Hire which features the three-wheeler used in the hit TV comedy series, was headed to a wedding in Selsey on Saturday when he was stopped by a policeman. As part of the van hire deal, the van comes complete with a blow-up doll in the back - inspired by the episode in which Del acquires a batch of faulty sex dolls, which have inadvertently been filled with an explosive gas.



But the overzealous police officer failed to see the funny side of the situation and threatened him with a ticket. The police officer said: “I was just checking there is an offence, and there is an offence there.” After saying he could deal with it by giving the owner a ticket, he added: “What I will ask you to do is put it down until you get to your destination. Why didn’t you do that in the first place, Sir?”



Mr Foster, who labelled the policeman ‘a jobsworth’, protested ‘It’s not a sex doll’, but the officer remained unmoved: “It might not look like a sex doll to you, but to other members of the public...” Inspector Antony Leadbeatter said: “The driver was politely asked if he would mind putting the doll out of sight as the officer felt that its rather obvious attributes were not entirely appropriate for family viewing.


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“When he refused, he was advised this could lead to him receiving a penalty notice under Section 5 of the Public Order Act and having given it some thought, he decided to co-operate. We’re pretty open-minded and a similar thing on a Saturday night when there aren’t a lot of children about would probably be overlooked, but on this the occasion the timing wasn’t great and we thank the gentlemen for his eventual co-operation.”