back to article Cambridge chap's todger topiary gets the chop

A keen Cambridge gardener was "stunned" by killjoy coppers who ordered him to take the shears to a novelty todger topiary - or face an £80 fine for the outrage against public order. Haddenham chap Ian Ashmeade lovingly coaxed a phallus from a bush back in 2002 "after noticing the plant was growing into a similar shape …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Somehow...

    ..I'm not surprised that he owns a Brabus Smart Car.

    1. Elmer Phud

      no title

      As James May would say 'Cock'!

  2. Dave 126
    Happy

    Have you seen the helmet...

    that Mr Ashmeade is wearing?

  3. The Indomitable Gall

    Could have just...

    He could have just trimmed the b*ll*cks back a bit and claimed it was a New York fire hydrant.

  4. irish donkey
    FAIL

    Its hardy a headliner

    If the proportions are correct I wouldn't be waving it about too much.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Indeed

      I can think of at least one similarly suggestive plant display arranged from cactuses at nearly every Spanish hotel I have been so far.

    2. TeeCee Gold badge
      WTF?

      Re: Its hardly a headliner

      What? That looks to be about four feet to me, judging from the car in shot.

      If you reckon that's small, I have a question for you. How the f*** do you get your feet to touch the ground?

  5. LinkOfHyrule

    POLICE STATE

    Bang out of order! You cant have the police going round ordering people to chop their willies off/down!

    Could the coppers not of covered it up with one of their helmets to avoid idiots getting offended by it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Pedantic but.....

      It''s not "Could the coppers not OF covered it up"

      It's "Could the coppers not HAVE covered it up" or, at the worst, "Could the coppers NOT'VE covered it up?"

      Either way, the problem would not have been solved, merely moved. The helmet would have been taken off one cock and put on another.

      1. LinkOfHyrule
        FAIL

        @Anonymous Coward

        Please try not to point out every little grammar mistake, it really isn't called for. My grammar may be slightly sloppier than normal on here but it is just web forum and it doesn't allow posts to be edited! I don't mind people saying things like "its '90s not 90's" as I learnt something that time but this grammar Nazi stuff is getting really tedious. Also why you feel the need to go anon I don't know.

        It's one of those mistakes you don't notice until the brief second between pressing submit and the page reloading!

        So I'm sorry but you FAIL. Moderators can we have one of those Jim Gamble CEOP buttons to report these cyber bullies who keep harassing me over this, its bloody pathetic.

        I'm not checking this post for grammar or spelling mistakes as I've got better things to do like look at hedges in the shape of knobs.

        1. Scorchio!!
          Headmaster

          Grammar

          'Twas not a grammar correction, merely pointing out that 'have' is not spelled 'of', neither in abbreviated form nor in full form. You might want to call this a grammar lame if you wish, but it is also an observation on the need for remedial education in supposedly educated adults.

          HTH.

          HAND.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      Title?

      Meanwhile I'm sure there was something far more worthwhile they could have been doing than wasting this blokes time!

  6. Rob Kendrick
    Boffin

    Forever on Google Maps?

    http://bit.ly/cockbush

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      After seeing that...

      I can't believe the filth let him get away with the larger and decidedly phallic succulent growing just to the left of it. Apparently has no balls though so I guess it must be all right.

  7. LuMan
    Coffee/keyboard

    "Ashmeade lovingly coaxed a phallus from a bush"

    <SPLFOORRRTT!>

    New keyboard, please!

  8. GrahamT
    Joke

    typo in the report

    "Police said if he had not had trimmed the bush back, he would have been fined for a public order offence."

    Surely that should be pubic order.

  9. Mad Mike

    Mirrors

    I guess everytime they walked past, the police assumed they were looking in a mirror. How can they 'threaten' him with a fine. Firstly, they collect the evidence and the CPS then decide to prosecute or not, not the police. Secondly, what the bush looks like is very much in the eye of the beholder. It isn't exactly a detailed artists sketch after all!! I guess people will be prosecuted for displaying odd shaped fruit and vegetables in future, just in case some killjoy, humourless idiot complains.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      Easily

      Police can issue on-the-spot fines for a variety of things, including disturbing public order (whatever that means) and have been able to do so for about 8 years now.

      It's normally used for drunken folks on the weekend. It doesn't leave any criminal record and can be challenged and taken to court, but the implied risk is that the wrong result *would* leave a criminal record.

      Yet another brilliant reduction in our civil liberties "pay this, or risk a criminal record". Thanks Labour...

  10. Tony Paulazzo
    Big Brother

    Conform

    or die

  11. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Ashmeade should have told Plod to go sit on it

    This is so typical of what a nanny state Britain has turned into.

    Besides, it is all in the beholders mind: it could be taken to look like a immature mushroom with two others on their way.

    No right sensed Plod, or even a prosecutor, would have dared take this to court with the threat of the Euro Courts and Human Rights arguments

    No doubt Plod would have asked for DNA samples from the offending bush as well as .Ashmede and required both to sign the sex offenders register, too. Little wonder Plod is held in such contempt.

    As it stands Plod will think they have new authority to govern these things - what about all those phallic symbols found on public statues, human or animal, that litter the public grounds?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    religioustards

    Some people need a good hard slap!

  13. cor
    Paris Hilton

    Phallic vegetables

    Just did a Google image search for title above, had to kill the screen quickly, NSFW.

    Not the best way to start Monday...

    Paris, because she knows how to trim bush

    1. regprentice
      Joke

      Ooh matron

      Having tried for a 'phallic vegetables' google image search and hit places by mistake I was still amused by the result...

      ( and who reviews hospitals btw ?)

      Places near:

      Glasgow, G73 ▼

      Local > Phallic vegetables

      Glasgow Royal Infirmary

      84 Glasgow St, Glasgow

      20 reviews

      "Good first section looking at basic skills and principles of patient care." - medicaltextbooksrevealed.com ... "They will receive the best of care!" - glasgowonline.co.uk

      0141 211 4000MapDirections▼

  14. Liam Thom
    Big Brother

    £80 fine

    Plod only keeps handing out these £80 fines because people think they have to pay them. The CPS wouldn't have touched it with somebody else's barge pole if the todger topiarist had kept his bush and told Hot Fuzz where to insert his public order offence.

  15. Guy Herbert
    Pirate

    In classical times...

    ... it is the police in this case who would have been prosecuted, and possibly even executed, for sacrilege. Hermae stood on every street corner and were associated with luck and protection from evil. Children were often given phallic amulets for the same reasons.

    Let us hope Cambridge survives.

  16. Barrie Shepherd

    PC Plod gone PC mad

    Every now and again I wish that these silly "edicts" from Police would get tested in the courts - let the police present the evidence of who was offended and let them explain why.

    I'd hope that a reasonable magistrate would have the sense to give the police/prosecution service a B good telling off for wasting public money - it's a bush, clearly a bush, if we go around letting one person object to things like this then we have become a very introverted society.

    PC Plod has gone PC mad - the Chief Constable should receive a "Please explain" from the local Police committee.

  17. Gordon861

    Stupid

    With incidents like this becoming more common is it any suprise that the Head of the MET wants to make it harder to sue the police?

    The idiot that reported this and the cop that threatened to fine him for it both need to get a life.

    He should have kept the hedge and refused the fine, then the police would have to drop it or get the CPS to prosecute, which would have been a case worth seeing in the Magistrates court.

  18. David Pollard

    Who's culpable now?

    I wonder how many more people will now be exposed to this outrage as a direct result of the police demands?

    If ten people a day went by in the village, who didn't know better and didn't avert their eyes as they passed, this would be at most five thousand a year who were casually exposed. If this gets on telly or in one of the broadsheets the attentions of five million or more will be drawn to it..

  19. Anonymous John

    Pruned title.

    Will nobody think of the seedlings?

  20. Tempest
    Unhappy

    Why do narrow minded b*tards get to set 'community standards'?

    Pornography, if this what the Plod was inferring, are set by 'community standards' and neither by Plod or the single narrow-minded b*stard who complained.

    As a result Plods and narrow-minded standards rule - which is not freedom or equality. Plod claims to serve ... presumably the public.

  21. Chris Miller
    Thumb Up

    I am a devout Hindu

    and this is my Sivalingam.

    Baffled PC Plods retreat in confusion!

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    should have

    let it go to court! Mind he would probably have wound up on the sex offenders register and never been able to work again.... defence:

    "Its not a cock, what makes you think its a cock you bunch of filthy minded perverts" :-)

  23. OtisAardvark
    Paris Hilton

    Pubic order offence

    So if Mr. Ashmead has "trimmed the bush back" as requested by the police, has it resulted in the optical illusion of enlargement of the offending member?

    Paris because I'm sure she could give some advice on topiary if required.

  24. Tony Green

    Pathetic!

    And the plods wonder why the public don't have any confidence in them.

    We had some similar stupidity here in Suffolk recently when they launched a huge enquiry to track down someone who'd reportedly cycled through a village naked. To charge him with "outraging public decency". Because after all, even though everybody in the village thought it was hilarious rather than disgusting, plod had nothing more serious to deal with. Apparently.

  25. Graham Dresch

    Idiots

    Time to plant a nice crop of mushrooms instead, may I suggest Phallus Impudicans ?

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Green with envy ....

    Not me, but someone who complained, and the plod who acted on the complaint.

  27. Simon B
    Grenade

    Real police work too much like hard work

    In other news, local thieves robbed a house and got away with it because local plod was forcing some chap to cut his bush, and real police work doesn't happen any more, it's too much like hard work.

  28. John G Imrie

    Cerne Abbas Giant

    Perhaps The plod should be prosecuting Dorset Council as well. http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/ChalkFigures.htm

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    one more bit of evidence..

    ..this just highlights yet another rot and blight in our society, loads of people have been seeing this for more than 7 years...then some single prude (or even the cops themselves) complains and he's threatened with something that couldnt be followed up on anyway.

    cops, get busy dealing with real crime

    gardeners - keep pruning your plants into funny shapes and classic Phalus

  30. Dave 15

    The same force...

    The same police force managed to snarl up the whole of Cambridge and the A14 (the major east/west trunk road) last Thursday as well. This time they expended 7 police officers and 3 cars to do it.

    There had been a major crash at 4:30 on Milton road, the injured (and in the event one later died) people involved had been taken to hospital yet at 6:30 the police still had the road closed and blocked off while 6 of them watched one of their colleagues painstakingly measuring and recording the GPS coordinates of the arrows and other markings painted on the road. (Note not the tyre skid marks, debris etc. but the road markings that will be there for years yet).

    If this government needs to know where to make savings that will BENEFIT ALL of the country it needs look no further than the police - we could happily make a manpower saving of 100% - think of the advantages - you wouldn't get shot boarding a tube train, beaten to death for being near a demonstration or that stupid 'hello hello, what have we here sir?'

  31. Skymonrie
    Troll

    O.o

    We should start a campaign to get as many people as possible with at least one todger shaped bush in their front garden for a year. If people complain and get the police involved, take it to the courts and it would show just how screwed up our own society is.

    MOST statues from the past have wangs on them after all, that's all the defence needed surely? It would be the modern equivalent of the Summer of Love against Vietnam in this strange time.

    Does the following ascii art make your anger...swell? 8===>

  32. Gray
    Grenade

    Make it a salute!

    He shoulda trimmed the "helmet" back, then nibbled a bit of an indent along the upper sides to resemble a fingernail .. then left it all with a small plaque underneath, facing street-side: "We are proud to salute the Cambridge Constabulary!"

  33. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Could have just paid it

    Could have just gone for the fine and raised publicity over it. Some guys here in Iowa City were growing a few stalks of corn between the sidewalk and street for like 10 years. Finally someone from the city is like "cut it down or you have to pay a fine." They said "well, fine then!" (Pun not intended). The locals now just view it as an extra tax I guess, they just pay this fine every year.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Dear

    Chief C*ntstable

    I am writing to complain about the helmets your bobbies are wearing, I think they are too phallic for my tastes and demand you change them forthwith.

    Failure to comply will result in you being prosecuted by yourself and facing a hefty fine at tax payers expense.

    Yours

    Outraged of suburbia

  35. VulcanV5
    Go

    Plodding on.

    Policing in the UK has been all to cock for many a year, but this latest confirmation, though belated, is welcome nevertheless. The gardener in this instance should count himself lucky though; others have been shot for less.

  36. Jesthar
    Grenade

    Time to up the ante ;)

    Next stop, a full size replica of Michaelangelos 'David' - after all, that's *culture* ;)

  37. Dave in the States
    Coat

    Sooo...

    It went from a pee shooter to a pea shooter?

    The one with "I brake for bushes" on the back.

This topic is closed for new posts.